


To Set the Worst Things Right

by Shardinian



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Amputation, Blood and Injury, Bondage, Character Death, Dark, Dismemberment, Gags, Heavy Angst, Humiliation, M/M, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Bondage, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Torture, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25443841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shardinian/pseuds/Shardinian
Summary: ***Lucifer has, at last, overstepped, and our Mistress has commanded me to set things right with but the simplest instruction.Satan......make him suffer.I told Mishka, once, that when humans needed to set the worst things right, in all the worst ways, they sold their souls to me.I don't think she really understood that, at the time, but after suffering the greatest sort of wrong, at the hands of a pact-bound demon... she does now.I can do nothing but oblige.***Satan's POV.***While this story does follow the events of my first work, Collaring Mammon, it is a stand-alone that is not canonically linked to anything before, nor after.No fluff, this time.  No comedy.  (Those will be back, I assure you, in my 3rd work.)  For now, just enjoy the dark.
Relationships: Lucifer/Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Comments: 114
Kudos: 125





	1. An Impossible Name

It is my birthday.

Most years, it doesn't bother me. My brothers love nothing more than to throw someone a heartfelt party, even if that someone happens to be me, and I am usually more than happy to pretend to be surprised and flattered at their clumsy, well-intentioned efforts.

Personally, though, I would rather not celebrate the… unique and unfortunate circumstances of my birth. Being born of love is something to appreciate.

Being born of hatred… is not.

There is something in the air, this year, that hasn't been there before. It may have something to do with my birthday, or it may be coincidence, but either way, it is tense, and anxious, and uncomfortable, and has left me with no interest whatsoever in celebrating.

I skipped class today. I have sent no messages, nor received any. If they have all forgotten me and my ‘special day’, I'm not about to complain. This warm glass of sherry and the most recent edition of ‘A Philosophical Consideration of the Secular Treaties of Dragons and Their Kin’ are the only party-goers I have any interest in entertaining, when things have felt, all week, so dangerously wrong in the House of Lamentation.

It is almost midnight, and I’m almost home-free, when the DDD I've left unattended on my desk buzzes for the first time all day. I shouldn't look. I shouldn't answer. I am alone with myself, and enjoying all the company I need.

But…

I set my book in my lap, sigh, and reach across the desk. They've always worked so hard to make me feel like I'm one of them. They’ve all tried, since the night Lucifer's wrath grew so furious that it spawned a confused and wretched new demon, to teach me who, and what, I am; it would be a far worse sin than mere wrath to shrug off their continued, if misguided, efforts.

I pick up my DDD, and check my messages.

Only one.

And it's not from any of my brothers.

_Happy birthday, Satan. I have a gift for you. Come to my room._

Mishka.

In two short years, that damn human has turned the Devildom upside-down. That she rescued Belphegor was impressive in and of itself, but when she managed to rescue Mammon from himself, it filled us all with the hope that, perhaps, with the love of the right person, we might all have the chance to become something more than our corrupted births had destined us to be.

If there's one person I have to answer… it's her.

_You remembered. I'm flattered. Can you bring it to my room, instead? I'd very much prefer to stay in tonight._

The ‘typing' message lingers for so long that I know she's written, and rewritten, her response a half-dozen times before she finally sends it.

_No. Come now._

As much as I loathe being ordered around by a human, there is only one possible answer to that.

_I'm on my way._

Her gift could only be one thing, after all. I asked for it once, albeit in jest, but if she's willing to turn her beloved pet over to me, even for a night, I'm not about to say no. Perhaps this is the reason that nobody's seen Mammon in almost a week. Has she been grooming her pet in anticipation of loaning him to new Master? Manipulating his infamous Rules, to ensure his explicit, if unwilling, obedience?

I may have no interest in celebrating my birthday, per se, but the opportunity to answer a dozen more pressing questions about pacts at Mammon's expense… is irresistible.

Plus, I quite enjoy humiliating him.

It's cathartic.

I knock on her door. “Mishka? I'm here.”

The door swings open even before I've finished speaking. She glances up and down the hallway, then grabs my wrist, hauls me inside, and slams the door closed behind me.

Mishka has been a human navigating the horrors of the Devildom since the first second she awoke down here as an unwilling exchange student… but I have never once seen tears in her fragile eyes.

Until now.

“Satan… I'm so sorry to drag you into this, especially on your birthday, but I-"

Her plaintive apology is already white noise.

I cannot see anything except my gift.

“Don't be,” I murmur, without even hearing my own words. “I've dreamt of this every night since the day I was born.”

In hindsight, I should have said anything else.

He's in chains; precariously hung up in the middle of her room, strung so high up on his toes that he can barely keep his balance. His wrists and neck are restrained in shackles, and between all three stretches a heavy iron bar; a set of stocks that's keeping his arms outstretched as far as they can reach. The only things missing from a perfectly ironic crucifixion are a wooden cross and a thousand braying supplicants. The threatening growl in his chest is being smothered by an enormous black ball-gag, one jammed so far into his mouth that I'm amazed he can even breathe.

Mishka steps up behind her prisoner, grabs a fistful of hair and wretches his head back. “Fuck you,” she hisses, with an unabashed fury that makes my uniform feel a bit too tight. “Until dawn, you will summon no magic; you will break none of your bondage… and you will do everything you're told.” She shoves his head down, so hard that his chin cracks off his sternum, then steps up to me.

“Satan,” she whispers, with her jaw set firm and tears in her eyes, “you told me, once, that if someone needed to set a wrong thing right, in all the worst ways, they came to you. Well, here I am. Take my soul at dawn and do with it what you will, just… make him _pay_. I've never dared command you before, but for this, I'll take the chance: Satan, until the first light breaks, you will stay in this room, and you will _**be**_ the Avatar or Wrath. _Make – Him – Suffer_.”

I cannot answer. I barely hear her at all, though I distantly feel the trembling kiss on my cheek and hear the quiet click of the door locking behind me.

Only later, much later, will I come to appreciate what I've really been commanded to do. For now, I can do nothing but stare at my would-be victim, and breathe an impossible name.

“Lucifer…”


	2. This is where he chose to die.

When I was a fledgling, back when we were still free to explore the upper world, I discovered a tiny, jeweled island, where the air was always warm and smelled faintly of salt and tropical flowers. I liked it there, and spent many days reading by the light of an unfamiliar sun.

One morning, while enjoying breakfast on the beach, the ocean began to creep away from my feet, as if the tide was going out. It wasn't the right time of day for the tide, however, and I watched, entranced, as the unfathomable might of the ocean receded off towards the horizon.

I followed it.

I had studied much in the way of natural disasters, and immediately recognized the silent warning of an impending tsunami. The humans in the nearby village, however, seemed confused. Some came down for a closer look. The bravest of them followed after me, their confidence buoyed, I imagine, by my own.

I didn't warn them.

Instead, I walked. Great fields of kelp lay in slimy, tangled heaps; coral skeletons, in all the colors of the rainbow, turned the virgin landscape into a museum of intricate sculptures. Forever behind me, there was only sparkling, white sand, and a single set of perfect footprints.

I walked until the sand gave way to tiny white bubbles, and then again to water, and stood there, a mile out to sea in a place nobody had ever stood before, and marveled at the silence, and the stillness, and the beauty of it all.

Even though I know the tsunami is coming, that a trillion tons of water, hard as iron and roaring louder than a locomotive and faster than an airliner, is what's waiting, somewhere over the horizon, to crush my bones to dust, I can't tear my eyes away from him.

He isn't fighting. He's not even struggling. Such a display would be an embarrassment, to my oh-so-mighty first-born brother. Instead, he's standing tall, still clothed in a perfectly pressed three-piece suit, with his head high and his glittering steel gaze locked, not on me, but on the door. He hasn't looked at me once, not even when I said his name. I'm nothing to him. A mouse under the floorboards. A cockroach under the fridge.

No threat, and no matter.

A drop of heavy black smoke trickles down the back of my neck and lands on the carpet at my feet.

He hasn't made a sound, but is grinding his teeth so hard against the hard rubber ball in his mouth that every tendon in his neck is strained against his pale skin.

Lucifer would never, in a million years, debase himself by trying to talk through a gag.

Another drop of smoke hits the floor, and when I run my fingers through my hair to try and clear the rest of it away, I feel the tiniest pricks of my horns, beginning to push their way through my scalp.

I'm not trying to transform. I have no intention of it, actually. If I lose my cool now, neither one of us is coming out if this room alive.

He finally turns his stony glare to me; the instinctive urge to grovel is so strong that I nearly drop straight to my knees, and viciously hate myself for even imagining it. He rakes his attention over every inch of my body, tearing me apart from the outside in as if I was the one hung up on display, then narrows his eyes and impatiently clears his throat.

“Yes, Lucifer,” I mumble. “I'm coming. Relax.”

I step up around him, carefully, and unbuckle his gag. He doesn't spit it onto the floor, as most people would, but waits, steadfast and furious, for me to ease the ball out of his mouth.

He doesn't thank me.

“That woman's arrogance is unfathomable,” snarls the blackest pot on the stove. “I hope you realize you won't be getting the payment she promised you, Satan. Her soul isn't hers to give, even if she doesn't yet realize it. I am her Master, and have laid claim to every sacred piece of her. Everything about her is mine, and always has been.”

He's talking to me, but glaring, once more, at the door, and at the memory of a simple human woman with the gall to cause him such… inconvenience.

A stream of black smoke caresses its way down my spine, and I feel the first itch of my tail.

Lucifer doesn't notice. “Mishka, dear… Run far, and run fast. I see all things. I can find you in your world, as easily as in mine. Rest assured, I will not kill you. I will tear your arms from their sockets, first, then your legs, then rip your treacherous tongue from between your teeth,” he muses, “but I will not kill you. I know every intricacy of the human body, and I know how to keep it alive. You will live the rest of your long, long life as a sobbing, writhing torso, squirming your pathetic way back and forth across my bedroom floor.”

Though his voice is calm and composed, the malice that lies beneath is seeping into the atmosphere, and warping the very environment around him. The walls are weeping blood and black tar. The seams between the floorboards are glowing red, as if a coal-mine inferno was burning underground. The air around him is shimmering, like it was rising off a superheated freeway, and moving through it feels like walking through a room full of cobwebs.

Worst of all, I can feel it leaching through my skin; I can see it, literally see it, infecting me, turning the veins in my arms an angry, venomous purple, inching its way towards my heart, filling me with

…I could slit his throat from here.

“No!” I don't even realize I said it out loud until he twists around to glare at me over his shoulder, furious that his ongoing tirade could be so rudely interrupted.

“No? You don't honestly believe you have any say in that human’s fate, do you? This is between me and her, Satan. Do not think, even for a second, that your opinion is any of my concern.”

“No… no. I wasn't taking to you,” I manage, as I step away to put some distance between his toxic anger and my vulnerable, eager heart. I force myself to look away, and focus on keeping my breathing steady, slow and even.

My heart is hammering furiously in my ears.

“Please, Lucifer. I’m begging you, just… stop talking. I don't have to check that door to know that it won't open for me – for either of us – which means we're trapped in here, together, until dawn. I heard the command she gave you, and I'm damn sure you heard mine. I'm fighting it, right now, with everything I have, but you're not making it easy. So… stop talking, or I'll jam that gag back in and leave you hanging there until morning, if that's what it takes to keep us both safe. In spite of all the bad blood in our past… I don't think I want to hurt you.”

He laughs, and the sound of it drives a nail into my spine. “You?! Hurt me? _Leviathan_ outranks _you_ , you deluded ass. Now get over here and release me from this ridiculous thing. I've tolerated this humiliation long enough as it is, and my patience is fast wearing thin. If it runs out, you'll have…”

…I wonder what he'd sound like without any teeth?

“Nngh!” I cover my ears and do my best to tune him out. Dawn. I just have to make it until dawn. I turn my back and try to focus on the safe, mundane details of Mishka's familiar room, instead.

It doesn't help.

The longer I look, the worse it gets. Mammon's jacket is hanging cockeyed off a chair, as if it had been hurled from across the room.

His beloved glasses are in the middle of the floor, their tinted lenses crushed to shards.

“Stop wasting time,” he growls. “I have neither the time, nor the patience, to satisfy your insipid dawdling. The keys aren't over there. She hung them around my neck – as a joke, I suppose. Ha, ha.”

I should release him. I know I should. To do anything else would be straight-up suicide.

But I have to ask, even if I don't want to know.

“Lucifer,” I murmur, “…where's Mammon?”

That's finally enough to shut him up. Even without looking, I can feel his icy glare boring tiny, frozen holes into the back of my skull. “If I was you,” he finally answers, “I would keep such dangerous questions to myself.”

…that's what I thought.

A bit of black smoke trickles in front of my eyes.

It's cool and damp, and smells like apple wood.

I don't wave it away.

Mishka's dining table is littered with more than enough evidence to earn a conviction, even without a confession. Bone-handled knives and antique scalpels, bone saws and curved surgical needles, heavy iron shackles ringed, on the inside, with vicious barbs; everything a cultured sadist could ever need, to inflict the most delicious sort of torture.

These aren't just any toys, though.

This is Lucifer's private collection. Not all of it, of course – I doubt his whole museum would fit into a single room – but still a respectable sampling.

A heretic's fork. I haven't seen one of those in centuries.

Lucifer's own bullwhip is coiled indiscreetly on the furthest corner of the table. The wood below it is darker than the rest of the table, saturated and still damp to the touch.

…my scold's bridal. I only call it mine because I thought he'd retired it, once I'd finally learned to control my temper. How many days did I spend with my head locked inside that iron cage, wretchedly sobbing and trying to beg for mercy with my mouth stuffed full of heavy metal spikes?

Hundreds.

I was a poor student, once.

I haven't seen it since then, but there's a new padlock hanging from the back, and the mouthpiece is painted thick with dried blood and tiny bits of shriveled flesh.

My heart breaks, and darkness starts to seep in between the cracks.

…Did he cry, Lucifer? Did he cry, when you took a poor soul who’s afraid of the dark and hides from scary movies, and locked him in that awful cage until he'd peeled his own tongue apart?

Did he cry, when you dug out his eyes? When you deafened him with furious magic? When you carved out the last of his mutilated tongue, to deny him even the simple hope of begging your forgiveness?

You didn't even make it quick, did you.

…Nobody's seen Mammon in days.

I can't… I can't look at this anymore. I've seen enough, and my horrifyingly vivid imagination is filling in the rest, whether I want it to or not. I can hear him screaming. I can see the heartbreak in his tear-filled eyes, when he finally realized that this time, at last, it was all for real.

I stagger away from the table, dizzy like I'd had too much wine, and drop onto Mishka's bed.

On the floor at my feet, Mammon’s bed, that bright pink atrocity that he claimed to hate so much, yet still lugged into the common room every movie night, is pushed up against his Mistress', right where it's supposed to be, but…

…but it’s soaked through with blood.

Too much blood.

…This is where he crawled, broken and trembling and terrified, after you were finally finished with him, isn't it?

This is where he chose to die.

Right here, in the only spot he'd ever felt safe, and warm, and loved.

Right here.

A glint of light above my head wrenches my numb attention away from the grisly scene at my feet. A thin, simple chain is hanging from one of the branches over Mishka's bed, with a set of handcuffs dangling from the bottom.

Every other terrible device in Lucifer's repertoire practically hums with magic… but not these. They're just plain, ordinary handcuffs. They could never restrain an arch-demon.

…They'd work just fine on a human, though.

“Oh, no…” I whisper. “Tell me you didn't. Lucifer… tell me you didn't make her watch.”

He can't really shrug, but he tries. “Of course I did. You really haven't figured it out yet? Mammon did nothing wrong, Satan. I was never punishing him.

“I was punishing _her_.”

The admission is unconscionable.

Even by my standards.

Somewhere deep inside my head, a miniature demon, over-worked and under-paid, must have panicked at the sight of every warning light suddenly flashing red, red, red, all at the same time, and slammed the emergency shutdown.

Is this what humans are trying to describe, when they say they've gone into shock?

I feel nothing. Not repulsed, not horrified… not even angry.

I am... empty.

... but I can't stay that way. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the negative pressure burning in my chest needs to sated.

I need to feel _something_.

On the day I was born, I was nothing more, and nothing less, than the manifestation of Lucifer's fury. I knew nothing, yet, of a conscience, or morals, or mercy, of pity, sympathy or love.

My birthday, of all days, seems the right time to remember what that felt like.

I shut my eyes, and let it all in. The tar seeping out of the walls. The fire burning under the floor. His rage is permeating every last thing in the room, including, now… me. I bask in it, bathe in it, breathe it all the way down my toes, until every empty, aching place inside me is filled, completely, with pure and righteous anger.

I am finally free, at last, to

_… **be** the Avatar of Wrath._

With the darkest of smiles, I summon my demon form, for what feels like the very first time. One drop of smoke becomes two, two become a trickle, then a stream, then a cascading waterfall that blocks out every bit of light, and turns my whole world black. I breathe deeply, inviting it inside, and let myself be consumed.

_Make – him – suffer._

…Yes, my Mistress.

Keep your soul, though.

This one's on me.


	3. Brutally, and without mercy.

Mmmmmm.

That feels so, so much better.

I feel… familiar, again; less like a whipped and broken gelding, forever hobbled in the name of ‘propriety', and more like… well, the very incarnation of pure and passionate hatred for every living thing.

I haven't felt this much like myself in centuries.

I snatch a pillow off the floor, flip the bloody side down, and stretch out on Mishka's bed. There's no need to rush; it's not like Lucifer's going anywhere. Besides, the longer I make him wait, the angrier he'll get, and so long as I'm feeding off of it, I'll take every last drop he's willing to give.

I strip out of my shirt and toss it away. The last thing I want to look tonight is ‘respectable’. My boa, on the other hand, can stay right where it is, so I can appreciate the delicate tickle of every last feather on my chest.

They're Lucifer's feathers, you know.

He had six wings, before he tried to upstage daddy and got his insolent ass booted out of paradise – ever wonder what happened to the other two?

A pretentious fashion accessory, that's what.

He hates looking at it, which is precisely why I still wear it.

I unbuckle my pants and squirm around until I work my tail up over my waistband. I run it between my hands, from its base as thick as my forearm to its viciously barbed tip, once, with my scales flared wide, and again, with them squeezed flat against the shaft, so the whole thing looks less like a shrink-wrapped spine and more like a gently tapered bullwhip.

There isn't much I like about myself. Pride is his sin, not mine.

I do love my beautiful tail, though.

I curl the tip up and absently swat at the handcuffs that are dangling over my head while I consider what, exactly, I'm going to do with him.

Make him suffer, she said.

Easier said than done, my dear. Despite what most humans seem to think, pain and suffering are not even close to being synonyms. Pain is easy. I could peel his muscles apart and carve my signature into his spine, but he wouldn't suffer for it. Not Lucifer. That massively arrogant prick would suffer more from a bad haircut than from anything I could

…Hmm.

I centre my meandering attention on the toxic green glow emanating from the end of my tail, and flex its living barbs in time with my breathing. Every tar-black tip undulates together, as if they lined the throat of an abominable worm, hungry and eager for a mouthful of screaming, writhing meat.

I give the handcuffs one last, contemplative flick, then roll off the bed.

A bad hair cut and a starving black worm… and I have my answer.

I move to stand in front of him, so he can finally see me again. It would be flattering if he looked worried, or even the least bit concerned, but he doesn't.

He looks annoyed, and the least bit bored.

He looks me up and down, taking in the sight of a fully-transformed and only half-dressed demon, then rolls his eyes. “You're pathetic.”

“Maybe. But at least I can move my arms.“

“Good for you. Would you like a trophy? A cookie, perhaps?”

I sigh. He isn't going to make this easy… but then again, shattering the Avatar or Pride shouldn't _be_ easy, should it?

“That's all you have to say? You're not going to command me to release you?”

“You have no intention of releasing me,” he dryly states. “Why should I insult us both by asking again?”

“Oh, my dear brother. You're right, of course. You always are.” I carefully unhook the key that's been hung around his neck and stash it away in my pocket, then step around behind him, lay my hands on his shoulders, and tenderly massage my way across the lengths of his outstretched arms. “Mmmm. I never imagined the day would come when I would finally get to see you in bondage. You wear it… mmmm. So well.” I caress the manacles that are pressed against his wrists, then sneak the tips of my claws across the backs of his immobilized hands. “You're beautiful like this, you know. As much as I loathe to admit it… you really are.”

“Get your hands off me.”

I stand up on my toes, and press my lips against his ear. “Make me.”

“If you insist.”

My toes burn, then my ankles. Before I can take even a half-step back, I'm blinded by an eruption of violet fire. Something slams into my chest, hard enough to hurl me, violently, against the furthest wall.

HAhahahaooww… Ow.

Ok, _that_ hurt.

Wheezing and laughing at the same time, I use the wall to help myself back up. Breathing is suddenly a lot more painful than it ought to be, and I spend the next minute doubled over, clutching my side and picking feathers out of my mouth. “Well played,” I chuckle, when I finally find my wind again. “That cost me… a few ribs, I think.”

“Touch me again, and it will cost you rest of them.” He's already folded his powerful wings closed, flat up against his back, by the time I look at him again. “And come back where I can see you,” he commands, still with the misplaced confidence of a man far too accustomed to being obeyed.

“Yes, Sir,” I purr, as I do what I'm told. “Of course. Is that better?”

He doesn’t answer my question.

How rude.

Instead, he sizes me up, glaring as deeply into my soul as my eyes, and finally shakes his head. “Mammon was a masochist with a fetish for being dominated, even by a human, but you…” He sighs. “I expected better from you, Satan. Fine. Have it your way, then. If you intend to leave me like this all damn night, I'm clearly in no position to stop you.” He subtly shifts his weight while he's talking; the first sign that his rigid bondage isn't quite as comfortable as he's making it look. “Stay away from me, do not talk to me, and revel in the sight of my humiliation, as it will be the last thing you ever see.”

His empty threat is enough to make me chuckle. “That sounds like a fine plan, but…” I finally voice the fantasy I've kept buried for two thousand years. “…I think I'd rather torture you, instead.”

He favors me with the exact same look I would've earned if I'd said I wanted us to have a tea party; just so, so annoyed that I'd dare waste his time with such frivolous nonsense. “Ugh. Do what you will, then. I don't make a habit of lending out my tools, but as you cannot fetch any of your own, I'll make an exception. Clean them off when you're finished.”

“ _You_ didn't clean them off,” I smirk.

“ _I_ am chained to the ceiling,” he mutters. “You, as of yet, are not.” With an irritated sigh, he shuts his eyes, and a pentagram of tiny purple flames ignites the carpet around his feet.

Oh, I don't think so.

I have only a split-second before the burning symbol roars up to engulf him, and don't waste it.

“Lucifer, Avatar of Pride - you will stay in your demon form until dawn.”

The ring of fire flares to life, shoots up to his knees… then struggles, sputters, and burns itself out.

His momentary disbelief is the most flattering compliment I've ever gotten from him. “That's… that's impossible…”

I have never, not once, seen Lucifer flustered. By anything.

I wish I'd taken a picture.

He shouldn't be surprised – he _knows_ he was commanded to obey me – but he is. Which can only mean…

“You didn't think it would work,” I realize. “For heaven’s sake! I warned you, you insufferable ass! The same night I learned that there was a very dangerous, very exploitable loophole in the pact sigil, I went straight to you. Did you not believe me?!”

“I believed you,” he mumbles, clearly with his attention elsewhere. He's not staring me down anymore; he's staring through the floor, distant and preoccupied.

He grimaces, grunts softly and shifts his weight again.

“So you believed me… you just didn't think it would work on _you_ ,” I sneer. “How perfectly, disgustingly _arrogant_.”

“This changes nothing,” he declares, already over his momentary lapse in confidence. “Whether I am bound by chains or by words is irrelevant. The night is waning, Satan. Do your worst, or leave me be.”

“Someone really ought to knock you down a few pegs, brother,” I say, as I head to the table in the hopes of finding the right tool to do just that. “Spread those beautiful wings of yours, and keep them open. All the way.”

A disinterested sigh and the rustle of feathers tells he's been a good boy. Everything gets darker, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun, and as soon as I turn around, I see why: the room is half as large as it was, split fully in two by a solid wall of shimmering black feathers.

“Wow,” I murmur, in spite of myself. “They're… truly incredible. No wonder you prize them so much. I never realized they were so big; I don't think I've ever seen you spread them like this.”

“Because I don't.”

“Why not?”

“When you said you were planning to torture me, did you mean with insipidly stupid questions?”

I roll my eyes, and step up behind him. “…I'm almost afraid to touch them.”

“Then don't.”

“Ah… if only the choice was mine. But we are pact-bound demons, you and I, and the one thing we haven't is choice.” I gently lay a revenant hand on one of his wings, and cannot stop myself from gasping. I feel it everywhere, all the way into my toes. Even my tail twitches. It feels like nothing I've ever felt before, so purely, radiantly divine that I half-expect a bolt of lightning to strike me down just for touching it. “Amazing,” I sigh. “But a shame, too. These would have looked… so good on me.”

“You don't deserve them.”

I press my bare chest flat against his back, and breathe my answer straight into his ear. “Neither do you.”

I lock a heavy set of vice grips onto the shaft of his first flight feather, brace myself, and pull. It doesn't come easily, and makes a sound like denim tearing when it finally lets go.

He grunts and spasms against his shackles, nearly losing his precarious balance in the process. His wing snaps shut, though I think it was more reflex than intention, because he sets his jaw and determinedly opens it right back into my waiting hands.

A single feather, three feet long and shimmering like gasoline on black water, floats silently to the floor.

One down, six-hundred and sixty-five to go.

“I'm not going to lie,” I sigh, as I clamp the hungry steel jaws closed again, “I have spent many, many nights fantasizing about doing this.”

“I know you NNGH!” (That was two.) With an irritated growl, he repeats himself. “I know you have.”

Three, four, five. 

And six.

His wing still twitches every time, but he's already managed to bring the rest of himself under control, and stands with a stony patience that's borderline irritating.

“Tell me, brother. Does it hurt? Being defeathered like the self-important cock you are?”

“There you go again with NNGH! With your insipid questions. Stop NGHHH!!! Stop talking to me.”

“If you really want out of this conversation,” ten, eleven, twelve, “just ask my permission. Satan, Sir, may I please be spared the indignity,” thirteen, fourteen, “of having to-"

“Burn in hell.”

I chuckle. “That's what I thought. So as we're still so politely conversing, I'm curious about something.”

“I don't NRRGH! I don't care. Shut. Up.”

“Your incomprehensible arrogance may have led you to believe you were more powerful than a measly pact, but-"

“But obviously I am NGH! STOP IT!”

Hehehehehe. I've been interrupting him on purpose, and he clearly knows it. Being cut-off mid-sentence is the greatest of his many pet peeves, and one that I have every intention of exploiting until his blood boils.

“Obviously you are…?”

“Finished with this NGHHH! DAMN YOU! Finished with this conversation.”

“Are you? Let's see about that. Lucifer, Avatar of Pride, you will-"

“NO!” Of course, he stops me there. Now that he knows he's a slave to my commands, he will do whatever it takes to deny me the satisfaction. “Obviously I am as bound by my pact as the rest of you wretches,” he quickly finishes, while the choice to answer is still his. “Ask your HNNGH!! Ask your damn question.”

“Did he cry?”

He looks at me over his shoulder, and his awful smile is almost enough to shatter my self-control and earn him an immediate and merciful death. “The whole time.”

The only thing that stops me from wrapping my arm around his throat and snapping his neck is the knowledge that he doesn't _deserve_ an immediate and merciful death.

I clamp the vice grips down on this thirteenth feather, lucky thirteen, and rip it out.

“Why didn't she stop you?”

“…She did. Several NNGH! several times.”

“Yet she still allowed you to kill him."

“I made her a promise.” I stop, and let him finish. “If she interfered, he would suffer her punishment for a thousand years, rather than five short days. She may hold dominion over your hand and mine, but not that of Lord Diavolo, nor Barbatos, nor Cerberus, nor any of the million lesser demons who grovel at my feet. Her power, as great as she might have thought it, is limited. Mine is ultimate.”

My next vicious pull tears out three feathers at once. “You're a monster, Lucifer.”

“I am a demon. As are we all.”

“Not all of us. She is a human.”

“And, through her mortal sin, earned her own punishment. We punish transgression, Satan. That is our duty. I punished hers, just as you NNGH! Just as you feel you are punishing mine.”

“Ahh, but the difference is… you deserve it.”

“So did she.”

As badly as I want to ask why, to ask what could one pitiful human have possibly done to deserve such a horrifying punishment… I don't.

I don't want to know.

Whatever it was, there's no possible way it warranted watching her beloved pet suffer, screaming and sobbing and begging for mercy, for literal days. If I learned what trite infraction had incurred the wrath of an arch-demon… I would have to kill him.

Viciously and immediately.

And if I kill him now, I'll have failed my Mistress.

Make him suffer, she said.

He can't very well suffer if he's dead.

I start to work on his second wing, and ask no more questions. It's twenty minutes before I've torn out every last feather, one by agonizing one, and he doesn't say another word. He doesn't twitch, or grimace, or even bat an eye. As determined as I am to be the Avatar of Wrath, he is as equally determined to be the Avatar of Pride.

Hollow shafts crunch under my feet, every time I move.

One tomb-silent hour and six-hundred and sixty-six feathers later, I stay my trembling hand. The vice grips drop from fingers too numb to hold on any longer, and clatter off the floor.

“Is that it, then?”

Without waiting for an answer, he folds his ruined wings against his back.

“…no, Lucifer. It isn't.”

The only mirror in Mishka's room is the floor-to-ceiling closet door, which I dislodge from its bearings with a single, solid kick. I prop it up against the wall, then grab his chin in my claws and wrench his head around.

“Look. Spread your magnificent wings… and look.”

What's left of his wings tremble, now, as they stretch wide. They no longer darken the room, nor feel like the remnants of heaven in my hands. They're fleshy and swollen and pink, spattered here and there with pinpricks of blood and tufts of black down, and I can't help but cradle their fallen majesty in my palms as I watch his eyes, bound by a simple command, reluctantly focus on his broken reflection.

His expression doesn't change, even as his gaze wanders from one side of the mirror to the other and back again.

He keeps his composure. He keeps his head high, and his back straight, and his shoulders square, and his lips sealed.

But as coldly indifferent as he's trying to be… his dark eyes soften, and well with despair.

I wouldn't quite call it suffering, though. 

Not yet.

But I'm on the right track, and I have the whole night ahead of me.

We both do.

Standing behind him, I lay my hands gently on his shoulders and chuckle in his ear. “Hehehe. They look like cobs of corn, with all the best parts eaten away.”

He snaps his wings shut, so hard that he nearly knocks me off my feet. The fleeting moment of vulnerability is already gone; frozen, once more, under six feet of arctic ice. “You are an unending disappointment, Satan. Feathers grow back. Had you any conviction at all, you would have amputated them and been done with it. Have you ever accomplished anything worthwhile? Or have all of your endeavors been as much a waste of time and energy as this?”

Already back to browsing the buffet of tricks and tools for my next course, I smile. “Even now, you can't stop lecturing me.”

“I'll stop lecturing you when you stop being a such a disgrace. How _ **I**_ could have ever spawned the likes of _you_ is beyond even me.”

“For once,” I murmur, “we agree on something.” I take an antique scalpel off the table, pop off the blood-soaked blade and snap a fresh one in its place. Without applying any pressure at all, I draw it across the back of my hand. It feels no more painful than soft-bristled paint brush, and leaves no mark at all.

After a second, though, the entire length of its passing begins to bleed.

Perfect.

I can't very well expect him to lecture me if he's focused on his own pain, now can I?

“Lucifer, I've always hated your insufferable speeches.”

“I have always hated _you_ ,” he returns, straight-faced and without a trace of insincerity. “Every last thing about you grates on my-"

“Wait! Hold that thought. For once, I'm actually in the mood to hear you out, but let me get settled in, first. I want to hear all about what a disappointment I am - as a council member, as a demon, and as a brother. I want to hear your laundry list of my seemingly infinite failures, every last one of them, since the very day I was born. I may have forgotten some of the classics, but you sure as hell haven't, have you? Even all those times you claimed to have forgiven me… we both know better. You don't forgive. You collect and you catalogue; you pin their corpses under glass and laud over them, late at night, masturbating to the thought of what a wretched, useless piece of shit I really am.”

…oh, no.

… I shouldn't have brought this up. As calm as I'm trying to be, every color in the room is taking on a sickening green tinge, and I know it's because my eyes are starting to burn. 

I'm ranting. Furiously, hatefully ranting.

I am the Avatar of Wrath.

And I cannot stop myself.

“Tell me how pathetic I am,” I sneer. “Tell me how ashamed you are, to call me your brother. Hell, even tell me all about how infallible is your precious Diavolo. For once, I really _do_ want to sit here and listen to you ramble on about what a great and glorious Master that cocksucker is. I want to hear every last detail – from how kissing his ass tastes like strawberries and chocolate, to how gentle he is when he bends you over his desk and fucks you like the dime-store harlot you are,” I hiss, around fully bared teeth and a furiously snapping tail.

He watches me succumb to my notorious temper, so brimming with contempt that it's practically dripping onto the carpet, then slowly narrows his eyes. “Look at you. You're not a demon, you're a disgusting little dog, snapping and snarling with your tail between your legs. I was a fool for ever thinking otherwise, and should have put you down the minute you drew your first breath.” His own fury is rising to challenge mine, and the atmosphere between us becomes a toxic, infectious miasma. I’m feeding off both, now, and my head is filled with the buzzing of angry hornets. “You don't need a lecture, Satan,” he snarls. “You need to be beaten, brutally and without mercy – like the wretched, useless piece of shit you are.”

It's obvious that if he wasn't restrained, he'd already be making good on his word. His fists are clenched, and he can't stop restlessly shifting his weight. For the first time all night, he's straining, just a little, against his stocks, writhing and squirming and desperate to be released. 

He wants, so badly, to punish me, and it's driving him downright mad that he can't do it.

I hate him for a thousand different reasons, but none so much as the fact that he's so often right. A lecture isn't going to chill the inferno that's boiling my blood and pounding in my ears. A speech isn't going to calm my nerves enough to stop my furious hands from shaking.

That can all wait.

There's only one thing that’s ever been able to quell my rage, once it’s begun to consume me.

I know it, and so does he.

I exchange the scalpel for his bullwhip and a solid set of pruning shears.

I need to be beaten.

Brutally, and without mercy.


	4. How terribly civilized, he and I.

I grab his right hand and wrench it out of my way to get at the padlock.

A satisfying click releases him – from a third of his bondage, at least.

“…What the hell are you doing?”

“Agreeing with you,” I snap back, as I shove his infamous bullwhip into his palm and crush his fingers closed around it. “Get your distance, so I know where to stand.”

“…I am left-handed, you craven ass. If you really-"

“I know you are. Get your distance.”

“I will gladly do so,” he snarls, “after you unlock the rest of-"

“LUCIFER, GET YOUR GODDAMNED DISTANCE!”

He blinks, taken aback at last, then narrows his eyes. “Whatever idiotic game you're playing, rest assured that you will not… nnngh!… no! This isn't…” He grimaces and grits his teeth, suddenly caught in a struggle he has no chance of winning, then glares resentfully at his free hand.

Stiffly, mechanically - and clearly without his consent - his fingers are working the whip into position, walking it carefully into a proper grip. “Damn you,” he hisses, as he reluctantly takes over and, with one impossibly deft manoeuver, flips the handle flat against his palm.

With an unassuming whisper, the thong drops beside him. Lucifer's bullwhip is six feet of the blackest, most intricately woven leather, topped with a cracker not formed of horse-hair or twine, but six-hundred and sixty-six threads of steel, each one as thin and flexible as a single human hair.

It is not designed to be gentle.

With his grip secured, he positions and re-positions himself a half-dozen times on his toes, trying in vain to reconcile a suitable posture with the rest of his rigid bondage. When he comes as close as he'll ever come, and before his treacherous body can force his hand, he stretches back, and lets his first strike fly.

The whip doesn't crack. He _is_ left-handed, after all. The vicious cracker sails harmlessly through the air and brushes across the floor, two feet to my right. He curses under his breath; I mark the spot and move into position. “That was pathetic,” I sneer, as turn my back and stretch my arms out to offer him the biggest possible target. “Again. Your best shot, this time.”

His best shot is nothing short of miserable. Again, the whip doesn't crack. His aim is off, and almost misses me entirely; he catches the very edge of my shoulder, but the blow, if you could even call it that, doesn't have enough force behind it to bruise a week-old banana.

“Oh, Lucifer. I thought you were better at this. Again.”

His third attempt is even worse. Catastrophic, even. A myriad of curses; the aggressive clang of chain; a choking, suffocating cough… but no attack. Not even a breeze. I turn around just in time to see him struggling back onto his feet, after finally losing his precarious balance and nearly snapping his own neck in the process.

“This is ridiculous!” he snarls, once he finally gets himself stabilized. “Either kill me or release me; I'll suffer no more of this asinine farce! If you-"

I cut him off with a back-handed slap that nearly knocks him right back off his feet. “You'll do whatever the hell I tell you to do,” I growl, as I grab one of his horns and wench his head back around. “You’re stronger than I am, Lucifer. You're more disciplined, more experienced, and much, much more powerful.” I force his head down, both to deny him the privilege of eye-contact and better drive my point home. “What you don't seem to get,” I hiss into his ear, “and I can't, for the life of me, figure out why, is that tonight, all of that awesome power is _mine_ to wield - _not yours_. So stop your whining, be a good little bitch and _DO AS YOU'RE TOLD_!” I crank his chin off his chest, hopefully hard enough to break a few teeth. “Give me your hand.”

Having his brain rattled must have shaken something into place, because he draws a long, deep breath, then another, then another… then slowly relaxes his shaking fist and holds out his hand. “I cannot land a proper strike with my off-hand, Satan,” he says, so quietly and so calmly that it somehow feels like a threat. “But if this is how you wish to spend our night together, so be it.”

He dropped his whip when he lost his balance, and is expecting me to return it. Instead, I pull out the pruning shears, open their curved blades as wide as they'll go, and work them around the base of his smallest finger.

Anyone else would take this moment to beg me to reconsider.

But not Lucifer.

He holds his hand perfectly level, even spreads his fingers apart so the shears can find a better hold, and stares coldly into my eyes. “Do it, you insolent coward.”

I squeeze the handles closed. The blades catch, for a moment, when they hit bone, then crunch straight through. He doesn't scream. He doesn't wail. He barely makes a sound at all, except for a guttural grunt that comes more from his chest than his mouth, as he snatches his hand away and clutches it against his chest. With his eyes on the ceiling and his jaw clenched, he breathes heavily through his nose, waiting with a disgusting amount of patience for the shock to wear off.

His reaction would've been better suited to stubbing a toe on a table leg than an amputation, and it makes me want to gouge his eyes out and leave them hanging by their nerves and bouncing against his cheeks like disgusting little tetherballs.

Just when I think I can't possibly loathe him more, he looks me straight in the eye and slowly holds his bloody hand back out.

There's triumph glittering in his steely eyes. Cold, calculated triumph.

I've never hated him so much.

I take his ring finger next.

Then his middle.

His reaction is exactly the same, every time. As determined as he is to camouflage his pain, however… I can see it. I can see it all. His brow is glistening with sweat. The colour is draining from his cheeks. His hand trembles, the third time he offers it to me.

“This is… your great plan?” he pants, still looking down on me as if I was a disgusting little cockroach, skittering over his shoes. “To carve up my body… one piece at a time… until… what, exactly? Until I run out… of disposable parts? Until I fall to my knees and plead for sweet mercy?” He examines what's left of his hand with all the disdain of a jeweler asked to appraise a hunk of glass; turning a critical eye to the slimy, shattered bones, the dangling strands of white tendon, the reflexive twitching in his lonely index finger…

…and he laughs at me.

My fist clenches the shears so tightly that my hand starts to shake. It's all I can do to keep from smashing the handles straight through his face.

“I have seen rats with more creative ideas than this,” he sneers, as he stretches his hand back out so I can finish what I've started. “Go on, then. Take your precious trophies, and… wait, what… what the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Take it,” I command, as I push the whip back into his mutilated hand.

All he has left are his index finger and his thumb, and he winces as they reluctantly close, as best they can, around his beloved weapon. “This is nonsense! If I couldn't strike you down before, how can I possibly do so now!?”

“You can't. But at least now, you have a convenient excuse.” I take my position, and spread my arms. “Go again.”

“SATAN! I WILL NOT BE-"

I snap my tail across his face. If I'd had my scales armed, I would have ripped him apart from ear to chin. “GO AGAIN!”

Snarling under his breath, he tries. He has no choice but to try. Twice, he misses me entirely. Three times, the steel threads brush harmlessly across my shoulders.

I can feel his bristling frustration, even from here.

“Now who's useless, Lucifer? Now who’s the lowly, incompetent, good-for-nothing excuse of a demon?” When I turn back around, armed again with my shears, his expression is almost… relieved.

“It's about time,” he snarls. “Take them both, and end this obscene attempt to humiliate me.” He throws down his useless whip and offers me his broken hand, instead.

For once, I'm happy to oblige. I grind the shears up around his index finger, and snap it off as easily as it were green wood. His thumb is more difficult. Its base is almost too thick for my repurposed surgical tool, and I have to throw all my weight into forcing the handles together.

It takes me three tries to get all the way through.

At last, he wails, and snatches what’s left of his hand tightly against his chest. His shoulders hitch, his chains rattle; he suddenly gags, like he's about to throw up all over himself. “Th… there,” he breathes, once he can draw a deep enough breath to speak again. “You have… made your point. Good… good for you.”

No, Lucifer.

I haven't even begun to make my point.

I pocket the shears, and gradually feel a damp warmth against my crotch, like I'd pissed myself, as his blood seeps into my pants. I grab his wrist and force his hand back up into the open shackle.

He doesn't resist.

“Hrrm. I wonder if this will still hold you at all, now that you're missing so many pieces?”

It isn't worth trying. I snap the manacle off the end of the bar and replace it with one of Lucifer's own favorites from the dining table, one that's lined inside with a dozen needle-sharp steel spines. Each spike is individually screwed in, from the outside, and conveniently, brutally adjustable.

I lock him in, and slowly, hatefully, twist the first screw in as far as it can go. It's a shame there are only twelve, because I could do this a thousand times over, and never be bored. I can't tear my burning eyes away. The way his skin dimples, when the spine first begins to push; the way it stretches, further and further down, until the pressure splits it like an apple skin; the way the glimmer of steel fades away, as it disappears, bit by tiny bit, into his wrist…

I haven't even begun to make my point.

When I finally finish the twelfth, his bloody wrist is so deeply impaled, all the way around, that it can't even twitch.

“You always took such pleasure in binding me in these awful things.” I grab his forearm and twist, slowly, just to revel in the way it makes him clench his jaw and hiss between his teeth like a leaking tire. “I hope you're enjoying it just as much from the inside as the out, you sick, sadistic bastard. Now let's try this again, shall we?”

I snap his arm away, _hard_ , to send his stocks violently rocking, then grab the other end and stop the motion dead before he has the chance to recover on his own.

What a delightful marionette.

Once his eyeballs have stopped swimming in their sockets, I unlock his left hand, and hold out his whip. “You wanted your left hand. Now you have it.”

He stares at his whip in silence, then tenderly, almost reverently, takes it without being told. “You are an even greater fool than than I thought.” He shakes his head, then rolls the handle into his expert hand. “But so be it.” He squares up his shoulders and steadies himself on his toes, then glares straight into my eyes. “As you wish, _Master_. Take your position.”

I do as I'm commanded, with my tail snapping against the floor and the whole world burning a sick, nuclear green, and present him the untouched canvas of my bare back. “Lucifer, Av-"

“Eight inches to your right, please.”

My tail coils into an irritated, writhing knot. “…Here?”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

How terribly civilized, he and I.

“Lucifer, Avatar of Pride,” I begin again, “str-"

The air rips apart with a crack like snapping glass. I was so unprepared for the impact that it staggers me, and cuts off my command with such violent force that I quickly check to make sure I didn't bite off my tongue along with it.

I can already feel my soft flesh welting to mark the point of impact, but can't yet feel any trace of blood.

That was gentle, by Lucifer's standards.

A warm up.

I force myself back into position. “Again.”

He hits the same exact spot, making up for his hobbled disadvantage by selecting the most agonizing possible target. I hiss between my teeth, and concentrate entirely on the searing chasm he's carving into my back.

“Again!”

His aim is unparalleled. Three more blows, from six feet away, all slice through the same three inches between my shoulder blades.

I am not a masochist. I do not enjoy pain, sexually or otherwise.

I don't want this.

…I _need_ it.

Nobody has ever been able to give me what I need like Lucifer can… and I'll never forgive him for that.

My shoulders are burning. The first trickle of blood is creeping its way towards my hips. He's settled into a patient, methodical rhythm, and I've already lost count of how many blows he's landed.

He is very, very good at this.

All at once, an electric shock tears through my back, as if he'd already carved his way straight into my spinal cord. It comes again, and again, and again, paralyzing my lungs and my legs and my brain. He's still splitting the exact same three inches, with surgical precision, over and over again. Numbing tingles spread through my fingers and toes and the tip of my tail; a sudden rush of vertigo leaves me reeling and disoriented.

I need to move.

If he hits that spot again, I might black out.

“Again,” I wheeze, as I stagger a few inches off-centre in the desperate hope of throwing off his aim, “Any… anywhere else. Anywhere but- GYAAHHHH!”

One, maybe two, of my ribs were already broken, and somehow, he knew exactly which ones they were. This fresh assault is merciless, and leaves me gasping for every breath. Every time I try to suck in enough air to stop my head from spinning, a perfectly-timed blow drives it all right back out again.

The room is swimming in circles.

Hs strikes the softest, most vulnerable area just above my kidneys, next, alternating sides, peeling me apart as easily as if he was wielding the sharpest knife.

Out of nowhere, he suddenly splits open base of my neck.

My vision blurs.

I… I need to… move…

His next strike would put the sharpest sniper to shame. He picks off the tiniest moving target, the very tip of my tail, a spot bundled thick with so many sensitive nerves that I lurch away and retch a mess of steaming bile down my own chest.

I need… to…

“Turn around,” he snarls, without breaking his rhythm. “NOW.”

I can't concentrate. I can't even think.

His command echoes inside my empty head, banging off the walls, demanding to be obeyed.

Staggered and disoriented, I turn around.

I see a blur of movement, hear a crack as loud as a gunshot, and a starburst of flashing white stars explodes in front of my eyes.

Somewhere, way off in the distance, I hear somebody scream.

I think it was me.

He didn't go for my chest, or my arms, or my stomach.

He went right for my face.

Lucifer is a sophisticated sadist. He knows every pressure point and every nerve ending; he knows precisely how to inflict the greatest amount of pain with the least amount of damage. His punishments are excruciating in the moment, but rarely leave a scar to remember them by.

This is different.

Stunned and blinded by blood, I throw up my arms to protect against his next strike; a deafening crack, nearly in my ear, rips the back of my hand open. Two of my fingers go dead numb.

He isn't trying to punish me.

He's trying to kill me.

This time, it's all for real.

I stagger back, hopefully out of range. “LUCIFER! ST-"

Something winds tightly around my ankle and yanks me off balance. My head slams off the floor, hard enough to make me forget who I am, what I'm doing and why I'm being torn apart.

“NO! ENOU-" Thunder cracks again, and my lips are ripped apart before I can deliver the command that would save my miserable life.

He has me right where he wants me, prone and dazed and on my back, laid out in the most dangerous, most accessible, part of his range. Twice more, I try to command him to stop; twice more, he shuts down my command before it ever hears the light of day, carving his heartless interruption across my throat, my eyes and my mouth.

The brutal steel tip of his whip is everywhere. When I try to guard my face, he tears open my gut and my groin, instead. When I try to roll over to present my back, he goes straight back to those first three terrible inches, wracking my body with nerve-driven electric shocks that leave me paralyzed and spasming violently against the floor. When I try to roll away, he snatches my ankle or my wrist or the very tip of my tail and drags me right back again.

I cannot command him, and I cannot escape.

The pain is beginning to dull and run together.

Everything is shutting down.

…I never should have armed him.

I curl my shattered body into a ball, instinctively trying to guard what precious little is determinedly keeping me alive. I can't speak. I can barely breathe. A bubbling pink froth is dripping rubbing down my chin. I've lost almost a quarter of my vision, and the rest of it is blurred behind a curtain of blood.

Mercy isn't slowing his hand, nor is the thrill of the kill exciting it. He is a machine; an uncaring, mechanical clock, counting down the final seconds of my stupid, pointless life.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Four.

Three.

Two.

At least Mammon got to die at his Mistress' feet.

One.

With nowhere left to turn, I heave myself onto my hands and knees… and fall at Lucifer’s feet, instead.

…

……

The clock stops ticking.

His timing has been so predictable that my shoulders jerk, twice, before I realize I haven't been struck again. My muscles are pulp and my thoughts are a disjointed bother; I am kneeling in so much blood that the carpet around my legs squishes and bubbles whenever I shift my weight.

But I'm still alive.

It takes me so long to piece together the explanation that I nearly black out twice from the effort.

He can stop me from escaping. He can stop me from speaking. But as rigidly restrained as he is… he can't hit me from here.

That whip has a six-foot range. No more, and no less.

I've gotten too close.

“Get up,” he seethes. “Get up, and get back in position. I am not yet finished with you.”

“Lucifer,” I wheeze instead, “…re… relinquish your… your weapon.”

“BAH! YOU WRETCHED COWARD!” He hurls his blood-soaked whip at my face.

I hook my claws into his waistband, and heave myself back onto my feet. With trembling fingers that can only half feel what they're doing, I pull out my shears.

“…What… what are you doing?” He snatches his hand away, and hides it behind his back. “I obeyed your damn command; I played your asinine game - you cannot punish my obedience! Put… put those away! NOW!”

There is, at last, an edge of desperation in his voice.

“I am not…” Breathing hurts, and it takes me three more tries to get it out. “I am not punishing… your obedience, Lucifer. I am… punishing this. Remember?”

I kick Mammon's bed up against his feet, and he stares at the blood-soaked fleece like he's seeing it for the very first time.

“Give me… your hand.”

“I will see your head mounted above my mantle for this,” he growls under his breath, as he reluctantly holds out his hand and spreads his fingers.

He glares straight into my eyes, judging me, hating me, condemning every last thing about me, as I crunch through his index finger.

He doesn't even flinch. Instead, he bares his teeth in a threatening growl, and maintains his predatory eye-contact, unblinking and unwavering, so ferociously that my tail curls itself protectively around my leg.

I amputate his middle finger, then his ring finger, then stare straight back, pretending to be a lot more confident than I actually am, as I push his whip back into his palm.

“No.”

That’s it. That's all he has to say.

It's almost enough to make me reconsider.

“Yes. You said it… yourself. You are not… finished…with me.” All I've left him are his thumb and his smallest finger, a useless combination that should afford him barely a grip at all. I squeeze his mangled hand closed, but this time, he doesn't cooperate. His hand is limp and loose, and refuses to hold on. “Lucifer… Avatar of… of Pride…”

_“Don't you dare.”_

“…you will… take up your weapon… and finish… finish what you started. Strike me… down. Kill me, Lucifer. _I command it. KILL ME._ And until you have… _you may not stop_.”

“SATAN! ENOUGH! YOU KNOW DAMM WELL I CANNOT – NNRGHH!!”

Between my palms, his ruined hand convulsively spasms closed around the handle.

“I know you can't,” I breathe, as I drag my still-breathing corpse back into position. I spread my shaking arms and twist to look at him over my shoulder. “I just want… to watch you fail.”

We stare each other down, and for the first time I can remember… Lucifer looks away first.

Now, he understands.

“…to your right, then,” he frowns, with none of his former conviction. “Three inches.”

I obey, but it doesn't matter. I know it, and so does he. Three inches or three feet; it's all the same when his weapon twists and slides and fumbles with every swing.

He's lost his sniper's aim. What few blows actually land are few and far between, and are scattered haphazardly across his enormous target.

He's lost his devastating power. The whip doesn't crack. Not once. It flops and it sags, tickling some strikes down the entire length of my spine and smacking me like a playful lover with others.

The cat has been declawed.

I turn around to present him my chest, my stomach and my vulnerable face… and so I can watch.

The steel cracker snaps across my chest, hard enough to leave a welt. I actually wince… but that's little consolation to him and all he's lost.

His eyes are damp. He draws a shaking breath and quickly blinks them dry, though, before painstakingly clawing the handle back into position with his pinky finger, squeezing his thumb around it, and lining up again.

I am still light-headed and shaking, and can barely keep myself upright; I feel half-drunk and delirious, from pain, from power, from fury and from shock, and when the handle slips, just a bit, the next time he snaps his wrist… I can't help myself.

I laugh at him.

It starts low; an amused chuckle that furrows his brow and purses his lips… but quickly swells into a mad, mocking howl that I couldn't stop now, even if I wanted to.

It doesn't matter that the effort of laughing is tearing me apart from the inside out. It doesn't matter that it grinds my broken ribs together or fills my lungs with blood or leaves me so dizzy I can barely keep my balance.

All that matters is the emasculated flush on his cheeks, and the fact that he can't bring himself to look me in the eye.

The cracker flutters down my arm, and I laugh harder, until my eyes well with tears and I'm gasping for breath.

“I think… you might be right… about me,” I finally manage. “I must truly… be pathetic… because I almost… feel sorry for you.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, and force my lungs to start breathing real air again. “Lucifer, Avatar of Pride… if you wish, you may stop.”

“I do not need your mercy,” he lies, still with his eyes on the floor. “Let me… let me finish.”

I hold out my hand, and wait.

His stubbornness demands that he strike again, twice more, before he lets his weapon sag, limp and lifeless… then hands it over to me without another word. Before I can ask, he offers me his hand and his last two fingers.

He isn't looking at me.

He would rather be crippled than a failure.

Grinding through so much bone has dulled my shears, and his last two amputations are slow, ugly things. I have to grab his semi-severed thumb in my fist and twist, all the way around, to finally break it free.

It isn't pretty.

But it's done.

…and it worked. My boiling wrath has been beaten, by the most expert of hands, back into a perpetual simmer. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, my skin is stinging, violently stinging like I'd spent the afternoon bathing in acid, and everything underneath is painfully throbbing, together, in perfect time with my pulse. My face is destroyed beyond repair. My poor tail won't stop twitching. Breathing feels like drowning in hot sand.

…I think I'm missing an eye. 

But I can think clearly again.

I snap the smooth shackle off the bar and return with one filled with spines. He waits, with his eyes on the floor, for me to get all the pieces locked together, then carefully eases his wrist inside.

…I can't bring myself to lock him in. Instead, I cradle the open shackle in both palms, and watch him.

He pushes gently against the spikes, winces, repositions, then pushes again. I don't know if he's searching out the most comfortable or most painful position, but after two more tries, he heaves a heavy sigh and, without looking up, nods at me.

I don't know which is worse: that he's still giving me his permission, or that I'm still asking for it.

I close him in, lock the shackle closed, and begin the painstaking process of screwing him into place. He isn't bothering to hide his discomfort anymore, and flinches each time a new spike chews its way inside him. He writhes and squirms and grunts under his breath while I'm twisting them in, up on his toes and back down again, up, and back down again… but there's no getting away.

Lucifer forged these shackles himself.

Nobody _ever_ gets away.

I get all the way to twelve, and once the last spike has been screwed into the very centre of his wrist, as deep as it can possible go, I pat him on the shoulder. “All done. You've been… a very good boy, Lucifer.”

“Leave… me alone.”

I toss the pruning shears back onto the table, retrieve the scalpel in their place, then stagger back to Mammon's bed, still at Lucifer’s feet, and collapse in it. 

The room is eerily quiet, now. It is a hospital floor at three in morning, when more ghosts than nurses walk the halls, summoned by the rustling fabrics and quiet moans of those poor souls in too much pain to sleep.

I snuggle into the ruined fleece, which still smells faintly of Mammon's cologne, and close my eyes. “Mmm. I can't believe… Mammon was right… about something. This stupid bed _is_ pretty comfortable. If it's alright with you… I'm just going to lay here… and bleed for a while,” I breathe. “But I think… I'm ready… for that lecture, now.”

“I suppose it doesn't matter to you that I'm suddenly not in the mood,” he sighs.

“It doesn't. Lucifer, Avatar of Pride…”

He sighs again, but doesn't interrupt.

“…lecture me. About everything. Don't stop… until I command it. But first…”

I grimace as I push myself back up, so I can flick the little plastic cover off the scalpel blade. “…open your mouth.”


	5. Wrath versus Pride

He's been droning on for half an hour already. On any other night, under any other circumstances, this would be about the point when I'd stop listening and start fantasizing about smashing his head in with a brick. Tonight, however, his monologue is soothing white noise. I could listen to it all night long, if only because I'm not listening to it at all.

His effort was, in the beginning, half-assed at best. The unfamiliar experience of failing at something – at _anything_ \- had rattled his confidence, something I wouldn't have thought possible if I hadn't seen it with my own two… err… my own one eye, and the first five minutes of his lecture was barely a lecture at all. He'd kept his eyes on the floor, mumbling half-hearted, uninspired reprimands at nobody in particular, until the simple fact that I was ignoring everything he had to say had ruffled his feathers (so to speak), and reignited an angry little spark. He'd fixed his irritated glare on me, laying curled so comfortably, so uninterestedly, at his feet, and his voice had rediscovered its first hint of conviction.

Pride had shaken his confidence… but wrath would rebuild it.

I had needed his expert hand to cool me down.

Now he needed mine to rile him back up.

I was more than happy to oblige.

From the comfort of my fluffy pink bed, I'd snaked my tail around one of his ankles, all without opening my eyes, and slowly, deliberately, pulled him off-balance, half-way through a sentence.

Just so he wouldn't think it an accident, I did it again.

And again.

His half-hearted reprimands became scathing insults.

I'd interrupted those, every last one of them, with chuckles and disinterested yawns and ridiculously unrelated questions, until his insults had erupted, all at once, into the beginning of an infuriated tirade.

Lucifer was back.

And he’s been droning on for half an hour already.

“…and if you think, even for a second, that this is going to end well for you, or even for Mishka, you should take this opportunity to seriously reconsider everything you think you know about…”

And so on, and so on.

I roll over and peel my aching eye(s) open, just in time to catch him grimace, tip his head back and swallow another mouthful of blood. There's still a trickle of it running down his chin, but there's nothing he can do about that.

What a shame.

I didn't carve out his tongue, obviously, just as I didn't amputate his wings, nor chop both his hands right off.

Pain happens quickly.

Suffering takes her time.

What I _have_ done, instead, is make one thin, shallow slice across the base of his tongue. That's it. That's all. A minor inconvenience. It isn't hindering his speech at all, but _will_ ensure he feels the burning sting of every hateful word that spews from his mouth, as the rest of us too often have.

“…was not designed for your whimsy, nor mine; we are not children, free to frolic wherever we please; we are not sheep, bleating for attention; we are demons, we are the gatekeepers, we bear the responsibility of…”

Ugh. What pedantic drivel. I'd better get up before lulls me to sleep.

Aaaaand…

Ow.

Ow, ow, ow, ow.

Every muscle in my legs feel like it's been tenderized with a meat mallet, better for eating than supporting my sorry excuse for a body. It takes me three tries to get to my feet, and none of them would qualify as graceful.

He doesn't pass up the opportunity.

“…and now look at yourself,” he snarls. “Look at what you've become. Is this really how far you've fallen? Stumbling out of a bed meant for dogs? At least Mammon had an excuse for enduring such indignity; what do _you_ have? Misguided loyalty to a human woman who chose me, and even _Mammon_ , over you? You were commanded only to make me suffer, and are spectacularly failing even at that, not to degrade yourself to the point of…”

Since he can't stop talking, even long enough to let me cut in, I answer right overtop of him.

And he absolutely _hates_ it, which makes me smile.

“Misguided or not,” I return, “…she is my Mistress. And yours. We are, both of us, her devoted slaves, whether we care to admit it or not.” I yawn, stretch out my aching back, then pull out my scalpel. “Open your mouth.”

If he could incinerate me with only his eyes, I'd be nothing but a pile of ash dirtying up a very nice carpet. He obeys, of course, while the choice is still his, and I can't help but snicker as the next three lines of his tirade come out as garbled nonsense. Pretty hard to form proper words with your mouth wide open, hehe.

“Oh, Lucifer. If I didn't already have a plan for you, I'd leave you just like this for the rest of the night.” I snag his busy tongue with my claws, puncturing straight through the tip so it can't squirm itself free, and pull.

Now all he can do is grunt like a preliterate caveman, and the fact that he can't stop himself from doing it forces me to bite hard into my own tongue, just to keep from laughing out loud and accidentally ripping his tongue right out of his face.

Working quickly, before he decides to bite any of my fingers off, I carefully retrace the first incision, cutting about halfway through the squirming, skinless muscle, then let him have it back and pat him on the head. “Good boy. Oh, and since I know you better than you think I do… Lucifer, you may _not_ finish the job yourself.”

The sky is black, the oceans are blue, and Lucifer would absolutely chew his own tongue off before he'd let me degrade him like that again.

He's growling, now. Viciously, hatefully growling.

I can see my own execution, playing out in graphic detail, behind his burning eyes.

“…do not know me nearly a-th well a… a-th you think you do, if you hone-th-tly believe th… th… thi-th i-th going to work…”

I chuckle. “That’s quite a li-th-p.”

With a frustrated scowl, he grits his teeth and forces himself to slow down. “I know what you're trying to do, th- th-… Sssatan. It will not work. Humiliate me all you like; I am not a… a… a-th…” he snarls under his breath before finally managing to spit it out, “… **AS** much a th- th- ssstranger to it a… a-th – GGGGRRRR! **AS** YOU THINK I AM! GODDAMN YOU!”

He's so incensed that he's starting to squirm against his stocks; all angried-up and not a damn thing he can do about it. He squeezes his eyes shut, spits out a mouthful of blood, and slows his monologue to a determined crawl. “I have… been through… far more… than you know. Nothing you can… do to me… in one night… will ever be enough… to break me. I have been… the tethered bitch… at the hand… of Diavolo… for millennia. I will not… be made… to beg for mercy now… not at your hand… not for…”

Blah, blah, blah.

I pat him on the cheek, then limp my tattered carcass off to go collect the rest of the things I should need to finish this up before dawn. It isn't much, really. No fancy, complicated contraptions; not even a weapon. If I'm right about him, breaking the most powerful of us all will take, ironically, a much softer touch than all that.

Two more spiked shackles, the rest of his matching set, that I fix together with a foot of chain.

One curved needle, and a bit of black suture.

And, of course, my trusty scalpel.

The rest will be all up to him.

He’s quieted down again. Being deprived of an audience, and now hampered by having to carefully vet each word for difficult syllables, has sucked all the wind out of his sails.

The storm is still churning, though, as dark and dangerous as ever, in the smoldering glare he drills into my back as I ease myself onto the floor and begin patiently shackling his ankles together.

“…nothing, you know,” he hisses. “You are nothing. You never were. You never will be. You are… the only thing I have ever created… that I whole-heartedly regret.”

My tail bristles, suddenly eager to snap up and ram itself down his throat so he can choke to death on it.

I don't take the bait. I close my eyes, instead, and hold my breath, refocusing on the pounding ache in my back, the stinging tingles in my left hand, the throbbing in my oozing, useless eye…

I might not be a masochist, but I certainly appreciate where they're coming from.

I exhale, slowly, then give my restless tail a reassuring pat and force myself to look at him. “Be careful, now. Take a few seconds and get yourself settled, before I start screwing these in. Being hobbled is going to make it a little more difficult to keep your balance.”

His eyes narrow to fiercely offended slits, burning red with furious hellfire. “What?! Get my-thelf thettled?! Who do you think you - DO NOT PATRONGH… GRRRR! DO… NOT… PAT… RO… NIZE… ME!” He beats his wings in a frustrated tantrum, and I have to duck to avoid getting my face smashed in. “GRAHH! THITH ITH INTHUFERABLE! Grow a th… th… DAMN YOU! Grow a back-bone and just cut my damn tongue out, you inth… inthol… NNNNNGGGH!!!”

Only Lucifer would favour _that_ over a mildly embarrassing speech impediment.

“Temper, temper, big brother. Don't get your feathers in a bunch,” I smirk. “It's making you sound th-tupid. I'll get to your pesky tongue as soon as I'm finished down here, don't worry. Until then, carry on. You were just getting to the good part.”

He's already carrying on, of course, because he literally can't shut himself up, but he's also taking pains to quickly calm himself down at the same time.

He lost control of himself, if only for a second.

It will _not_ happen again.

He's better than that.

If he wasn't…

…he'd be me.

“…really don't know where I went wrong with you, Th-atan. You th-owed th-uch promi-th, in the beginning. Our fate-th have alway-th been entwined, you and I, even if we never quite…”

His voice is already cool and distant and perfectly calm, as if he was musing to himself in an empty elevator. He has his head tipped back, better to ignore me while I work, and isn't goading me with any more of his trademark insults. He isn't trying to hide his lisp anymore, either.

If it doesn't bother him, then it has no power over him.

He’s figured out my game, and stormed off the field.

I've been working on him the whole time, by the way, carefully twisting two-dozen steel spikes, one by one, into his ankles, and he hasn't so much as flinched. I've only pushed them all about half as deep as they _could_ go, were I feeling especially cruel, and leave them nibbling at his flesh, rather than chewing their way through muscle and tendon and bottoming out on bone. I want him hobbled, not crippled.

Not yet, anyway.

I push myself, with a monumental effort, back onto my aching feet, and leave him in peace to figure out the least painful way to stay on his.

“…will be th-uch a th-ame, having to ngh!… having to execute you. Lord Diva-ngh… …Lord Diavolo will enthure it a grand thpec- ah! nnnnngh… a grand thpectacle, at leath-t…”

There is no comfortable way to stand, with twenty-four tips of the sharpest steel nipping at your ankles. Even so, it only takes him a minute or two to work himself, if not into a comfortable position, into a tolerable one.

“…of you have any idea how truly lucky you are, to have dith-covered a Lord ath conthcientious ath Lord Diavolo, eth… eth… peth…ially,” (that was a hard one), “in a world tho dark…”

I roll my eyes. “Onto applauding Diavolo already? Ugh. I was wondering how long that would take. I know I told you that I wanted to hear this,” I sigh, “but… I've changed my mind. I don't.”

I really, really don't.

My ears are about the only part of me left that isn't bleeding, but if I have to listen to him s-s-stutter his way though another laundry list of that bastard's thousand-most noble qualities, they’ll leak so much blood that I might drown in it.

“That being said: Lucifer, shut up.”

I've been waiting two thousand years to say that, and cannot begin to describe how satisfying it is to watch him choke on his next words, and lapse into cold, judgemental silence.

His apathetic eyes flick idly between mine, my hands and my pocket, searching for what he knows is coming next. When I confirm his suspicions by pulling out my scalpel, his lips tug into a sour, self-deprecating smile.

“Do you have any last words, while you can still form them?”

His answer is immediate, and cold, and laced with so much venom that I can already feel myself rotting away, from the inside out, as it seeps into my ears.

“Not for _you_ I don't.”

He proudly, defiantly, sticks out his tongue and waits, on the heel of one last, definitive insult, to be silenced forever.

Once last time, I pull the blade across the base of his tongue, slow and steady and carefully precise, then step back to admire the fruits of my labour.

He snaps his head away. His dark eyes are sparkling with triumph… but the victory is short-lived. He's letting his mouth hang open, the better to let this fresh welling of blood pour from his lips, rather than pool in his stomach, but after only a few seconds, his brow furrows with confusion. He frowns, and starts working his jaws like there's a bit of food caught between his teeth that he can't quite dislodge. His expression morphs, almost in slow motion, from confusion, to disbelief, to despair.

From here, I can see what he cannot: a squirming tongue, still attached at its base and nowhere else, uselessly curling and twitching and bleeding out between his teeth.

He fixes me with a mortified stare.

I smile at him. “Yes? Oh, dear me. You thought I was going to cut out your tongue, didn't you? Oh no, no, no. Not yet.” I slip around behind him, press my chest against his back and watch him, watching me with growing horror, in the mirror. “Without a tongue, you wouldn't be able to speak at all. How, then, could I ever command you to finish such a riveting lecture? A difficult command is fair-game; an impossible one carries no weight at all. So… since I've considerately left you everything you need… Lucifer, Avatar of Pride, finish your-"

“NGHOOOO!”

The dining room table explodes, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that it was my own spine that smashed it to splinters.

An angry goose can break an arm with its wings.

A humiliated demon, pushed a little too far, can break everything else.

The blame lies entirely on my shoulders, I guess. I never should have let him get away with that in the first place. Prudence still insists that I take a moment to politely dissuade him from trying it again, though.

I drag myself to my feet, panting and limping and gritting my teeth, and snatch a chain and a padlock out of the rubble.

I'm not angry. I'm not even bothered. My rage has been broken and reined and harnessed; it's slithering around my feet, begging to be turned loose, rather than erupting like an uncivilized beast at the most insignificant slight.

Wrath doesn't have to be two junkies beating each other to death in a nightclub parking lot.

Wrath can smile politely; it can laugh at your jokes and hold your hand and lend a sympathetic ear when times are tough, and keep right on kindly smiling as it bricks you up in the wine cellar to scream yourself to death.

I fix the chain to the shorter one between his ankles, toss the free end over his stocks, and pull. I don't need to pull hard; just enough to drag his straining toes off the floor, and leave him entirely suspended by his impaled wrists. I leave him like that, writhing and grunting and straining to hold himself up, and…

And…

Oh, my.

What a serendipitous bit of luck.

Ever seen a puppy held over a pool, and watched it doggy-paddle in mid-air? Suspending a flying beast, it seems, triggers a similar instinct.

His four great wings are flapping, convulsively, pathetically flapping, in a vain attempt to fly. Deprived of their feathers, though, the misguided effort is only throwing him more off-balance, sending him violently rocking in his stocks, which, in turn, drives their helpless flapping even harder.

Guess he isn't so perfect after all.

His face contorts with agony as every powerful beat tears at his wrists, but as excruciating as it must be, he is still, and always will be…

Lucifer.

He grits his teeth until every tendon in his neck is straining against his skin. Though sheer determination alone, he forces his wings to stop, holding them wide open and trembling down to their tips. It's an applaudable effort, but just when I'm tempted to do just that, instinct overpowers conviction, and his two bottom wings spasm shut against his hips.

He heaves a strangled sob as his more powerful upper wings join in, and send him out of control all over again.

“NNNNGG! UGH-AAAGH!”

Though I could watch this delightful show all night long, I step up beside him, instead, careful to keep clear of his desperate ruckus, and lay a sympathetic hand on his cheek.

“Lucifer.”

He snaps his eyes open, now so overwhelmed by pain and confusion and the terrifying experience of being unable to control his own body that he forgets he's supposed to be furious.

He looks helpless, instead, and terrified by it.

“Until I let you down, keep your wings closed.”

He gapes at my words, as if I'd been speaking a language he didn't understand, then grimaces as my command arches his back and wrenches his wings up against his spine, tightly closed. His shoulders hitch a few times, still trying, in vain, to succumb to primal instinct… but they can't.

He cannot disobey.

The chain creaks like the most soothing metronome as he sways to a gradual stop. His eyes are dazed and swimming, and he hiccups like he'd just stumbled off a rollercoaster.

There's hardly anything left of his wrists; they've been shredded into an unrecognizable pulp. Here and there, I can make out the wet shine of exposed bone. His shoulders are still jerking, still instinctively trying to take flight, but his wings are completely paralyzed, and don't even twitch.

He's covered in feverish sweat, so much that his shirt is soaked through and clinging to his chest. Anytime he tries to relax, his collar chokes him hard enough to leave him wheezing like an iron lung, and he's forced to heave himself back up again on arms that are already trembling from the effort. He can't stop panting, and every ragged breath comes out as its own tense, agonized groan.

When he finally looks at me again, his expression is so sullen that even without words, its message is impossible to misconstrue: he would've sooner struggled until he'd ripped both of his own hands clean off than be helped by the likes of _me_.

“You're welcome.”

He frowns, drops his eyes… and doesn't look at me again. Instead, he focuses on more pressing concerns; namely, trying to coax his crippled tongue into cooperating. (And, presumably, willing his arms not to suddenly give out and drop him like a two-hundred pound bag of worthless dirt.) With his head twisted as far from me as it can go, he's grimacing and flinching and working his jaws back and forth, as if determination alone might be enough to stitch enough muscle back together to permit him even a few coherent syllables, and a tiny shred of dignity.

I wonder if he appreciates that I'm allowing him plenty of time to practice?

Probably not.

But I do give him time.

Not all the time he needs, because he needs far more than I have… but enough.

“Now… where did you leave off?”

He snaps his head around, wide-eyed and sporting the exact same expression that Mammon gets every time he walks into class and realizes he's completely forgotten it was mid-terms.

“Ah, right. Diavolo, the great and powerful. But… I still don’t want to listen to that. Instead… tell me about you, Lucifer. Tell me… all about what it felt like, when you were an angel.”

It doesn't matter that I won't understand a single word he says. I am an irrelevant variable in this equation. He is all that matters. He, and all the most painful memories of how glorious he was, once, are all that matters.

He looks mortified.

For the first time all night, he doesn't obey.

But he doesn't resist, either.

He starts and stops a dozen times, all without making a sound. His lips carefully form the letters he remembers; one, then another, then another, but everything inside must feel so terribly wrong, so floppy and loose and out of position, that he scraps each word before his mangled tongue can ruin it and tries a different one.

With every failed attempt, his expression becomes more despaired. He's blinking too much, and breathing too fast. The edges of his lips are quivering.

He's practically begging me, with his eyes alone, for a little more time.

Just a little more time.

It isn't up to me, though.

His pact forces his lips apart, and wrests control of his lungs and larynx and mutilated tongue away from him.

Lucifer, the Avatar of Pride and mightiest first-born demon…

…begins to babble like a toddler.

“Ooobl… mle gooh buuueee bluuun…”

Every drop of blood left coursing through his body rises to his cheeks, all together, in a fiercely humiliated flush. His dark eyes well with frustrated tears as he hears his own deep, beloved voice spewing awful, garbled nonsense.

“…bluh uh aaacgh… oooglom ah bluuhhh nuh…”

The tears are flowing freely, now, trickling down his cheeks and dripping off his chin.

I don't laugh. I could, but I don’t. Instead, I'm giving him my undivided attention, and its only _because_ I'm listening so raptly, and even making an idle game out of seeing how many words I can actually decipher, that it gradually dawns on me: there's more to his lecture than it seems.

He's repeating himself. Not the whole thing, mind you, and not over and over and over again like a zealous mantra, just… every few minutes, in between what I'm assuming are full sentences, he's slipping in something else. A few short words, that always sound the same.

“…ehhhht eeee hawp…”

He flicks his eyes up every time he says it, desperately searching me for some hint of acknowledgment or recognition, then groans despondently, drops his eyes and winces as he's forced to dive back into his most painful memories and narrate them, in excruciating detail, to nobody at all.

Now that I'm listening for it, I catch his next chorus right away. And as soon as I hear it, I know exactly what he's trying to tell me.

“…nnnngh!… ehhht eee haaawp…”

…

My jaw drops.

It's… it's impossible.

Not from him.

Not from Lucifer.

There’s no mistaking it, though.

I know what I heard.

“Lucifer… you're trying to tell me something, aren't you? Say it again.”

His half-hearted hope becomes an offended scowl as he realizes that I have, at last, deciphered his coded message, only to seemingly throw it right back in his face.

“No… no. I'm not mocking you. Not this time. Just try again. One more time.”

His damp eyes lock determinedly on mine, salvaging what little dignity he has left, and he forms the words again, enunciating each one as carefully as he can.

“…Eeeeese… eht…ee… awp.”

_Let me stop._

They're the last words he'll ever say.

_Please… let me_

“Stop,” I breathe, so taken aback that I barely register the sound of my own voice. “Yes. You… you can stop.”

He lets his gaze fall away, slowly closes his mouth and exhales a long, shaking sigh.

He doesn't look up again, even as I stumble back to my feet, grab the center of his steel stocks in one hand, and unlock them from the ceiling with the other. The weight of his helpless body tries to drag me off-balance, but I grit my teeth, summon what little strength I have left and lower him, gently, onto his knees.

A quiet groan is all the thanks I get, and I'm flattered to have received even that much.

I unlock his collar, then one of his wrists. Getting the shackle off is an unpleasant chore, to put it lightly; I have to ease it open, bit by bit, to give each spike enough time to pull out of his flesh. One is completely stuck, its tip caught fast in a splintered piece of bone; it takes me almost five minutes of careful readjusting to finally work it free.

He's watching me work. Watching my hands, actually, with dull and empty eyes.

I finally manage to get his arm free, but he doesn't pull it away. He leaves it to me, cradling his tender wrist in both hands, to gently set it in his lap.

As detached as he seems, though, he's being anything but a passive observer. He's shifting his wings around, keeping them out of my way; he's carefully adjusting, and readjusting, his shoulders, to keep the iron bar balanced; and now he's twisting his arm, up and around, so I can reach the last padlock without having to duck.

I can't remember ever feeling so… comfortable with him.

It's actually sort of nice.

We work together, in silence, for another few minutes, until I finally get his other wrist free. I lift the bar, and all the weight that it carries, off his shoulders, and lay it on Mishka’s bed.

When I turn back around, I can't help but feel an unfamiliar twinge of pity.

He isn't slumped over, broken and defeated; he isn't looking over his ruined hands, mourning for what he's lost.

I might have shattered his beautiful vase, but he still remembers what it looked like, and has done his childlike best, with string and white glue and little pieces of tape, to patch it back together again.

His eyes are downcast, and the last of his tears are still trickling silently down his cheeks, but he's holding himself poised and proper, with his back straight and his shoulders square, and there's something indescribably sad about it.

I take a knee in front of him, clean a bit of the blood off his chin, and gently tip his head up so I can better see what I'm doing.

“No, no. Keep it closed,” I say, when he opens his mouth and offers me his sagging tongue, all without looking up. “You can keep it. I want you to feel it, squirming around in there, every time you still feel you have something oh-so important to say.”

Like right now, for example.

He's not dead yet, and the ghost of an offended scowl creeps across his face. He starts to say something, but catches himself just in time, and flicks his eyes up to glare at me, instead.

Not quite dead yet, and not quite broken, either.

When I reveal, instead of a scalpel, a long, curved needle instead, his cool glare hardens around the edges, and he pulls his head away. He doesn't snatch it or yank it away, mind you, just poignantly puts enough space between his chin and my hand that he can communicate, in no uncertain terms, that this is **not** going it happen.

From what deep, winding vein he's still mining so much disgusting confidence, I have no idea.

But it’s annoying.

Downright maddening, even.

He isn't being aggressive, or threatening, or showing even the slightest hint of retaliating. No growling, no gnashing of teeth; nothing but a stern, disapproving glare that prickles the hairs on the back of my neck and sets my tail flicking irritably behind me.

When I took his words, I didn't expect to strengthen his voice – but it's still there, in my head, louder in my imagination than it ever was in life, judging me, at my own hands, worse than it ever could at his.

_Coward._

_I knew you couldn't do it._

_I knew you wouldn’t have the guts._

I know he's goading me; I know he's playing me; I know he's poking my caged wrath with a stick, daring it to bite; I know exactly what he's doing, turning me against myself and doing it all with that glare, that loathsome, disgusting, infuriating glare, that’s viciously insisting that I

_Finish what you started._

“Fine!” I snap, and have to pretend I don't see the cruel, victorious sparkle in his eye as he presents his tongue again. “I hope you appreciate this, you insufferable bastard.”

That he still wields so much power over me, even now, makes me hate myself almost as much as I hate him.

He doesn't get a scalpel. This time, I want it to _hurt._ If this is what he wants so badly, then he can have the pleasure of experiencing every last agonizing second of it.

I dig five claws into his tongue, not even at the base, just wherever they happen to fit, plant my other palm against the pretentious diamond that's mashed into his forehead for no good reason, and pull.

Slooooowly.

He handles it well, for the first twenty seconds or so. Then he starts grimacing, though still tries his damndest to hide it.

I've pulled it out as far as it can go, and am pressing back so hard with my other arm that there's a good chance he'll have a perfect hand-print bruised into his forehead by the time I'm finished.

His eyes are starting to water.

“Nnnnngh!”

He's squirming.

His tongue slowly starts to tear apart, from one side.

“NNNNGH!! NNNNGGGHHH!!!”

It's the only sound he can make.

He grabs for my wrist, but without any fingers, all he can do is paw at my arm like a half-starved dog.

It feels like ripping apart a band of wet leather.

We might have more in common than I thought, because his panicked, god-awful squealing is really starting to turn me on.

His wings are thumping against the floor. All that blood is pouring back down his throat, and he's choking on it.

_**“NNNGGGHHHHHH!!!”** _

His head snaps back so hard that he nearly topples over when I abruptly finish the job with one last, vicious yank.

It really doesn't make me feel any better, though.

“Lucifer.”

He's doubled-over, coughing up blood and clutching his mouth with both hands. As soon as he looks up, I punch him, as hard as I can, in the face, and send him crashing backwards over his own wings.

There.

 _Now_ I feel better.


	6. Up Above and Down Below.

“This would be easier… and quicker… if I still had any depth perception,” I grumble, as I stretch my head back and squint to try and gauge my distance.

My fingers close on empty air, and empty air, and empty air again, before pinpointing their target. I snag the needle, hanging by a bit of black suture, and gently pull.

The thread tugs the middle of his lips closed, and I exhale a sigh that's been two thousand years in the making. “Mmmmm. There we go. What do you think? Three down, what… Two to go? No… three, I suppose. Yes, let's do three. I bet it would drive you crazy if this isn't perfectly symmetrical.”

He glances at me just long enough to communicate, quite clearly:

_Do three or three hundred; I couldn't care less._

_Just stop talking to me._

with nothing more than a very steady, very stale, glare, then tips his chin back up, into the light, so I can better see the tiny knot I'm trying to tie.

He's kneeling straight up, with what's left of his hands courteously folded in his lap, and other than the occasional disinterested look or quiet sigh, hasn't moved at all.

I expected, by this point, that he would be stubbornly ignoring me, but he's still fully engaged… albeit without much enthusiasm.

Just a disappointed father, humoring his idiot child.

_So it's a tea party after all, is it?_

_How… unimaginative._

I snip off the suture, thread a fresh piece into the eyelet, and pierce the needle, firmly and steadily, back through the top of his upper lip.

“I should probably confess that I'm being rather selfish right now,” I muse, as the silvery tip reappears. “This isn't for Mishka. It's not even for Mammon. This,” I purr, as I carefully pull another bit of his mouth closed, “is just for me. I've always wanted to sew you shut, Lucifer. All of you. Your lips, your ears, your eyes; I've dreamt, for so long, about how you'd look, all stitched up and stumbling blindly through the halls, desperately trying to find your room before anyone had the chance to see you in such a… deplorable state.”

Something in his almost… sympathetic? look makes me chuckle.

“Oh, don't worry. I know you've considered doing exactly that to me, too.” I gently turn his head to the side, and he lets me do it. “Had you any true conviction, rather than just the haughty appearance of it, you would have done it when you still had the chance. Ahhh… sonofa…”

The needle slips, twice, while I'm trying to tie off my stitch.

Lucifer snorts, and rolls his eyes.

_Can you do **nothing** well?_

“ _You_ can piss right the hell off. I can only feel six fingers, thank you very much, and one of those six is broken. Though I guess I really shouldn't complain to you about my fingers,” I smirk. “Aha! Gotcha, you slippery little bastard. The needle, I mean. Not you.”

He heaves an exasperated sigh.

I think he hates having to listen to me more than he hates having his mouth sewn shut.

“You know, you're actually decent company when you can't talk. Someone should have shut you up centuries ago. Ugh – but could you at least _try_ to swallow some,” I mutter, as he forces another mouthful of blood between his stitches, and I'm forced to stop, again, to wipe my workspace clean. “This is difficult enough without everything being sticky, and I know you're doing it on purpose. Could you try, for once in your life, not being an absolute prick?”

For a second there, I could've sworn the bastard chuckled to himself.

“Keep laughing, Lucy. I'll pack your useless mouth full of your own fingers before I finish closing you up for good.”

That, at last, is enough to earn me a glare that could've withered a cactus. I don't think he’s offended by my humble threat, though; in my head, his look translates to something more along the lines of:

_Do **not** call me that._

“That's what I thought.” I tilt his head back and push the needle into his mouth and back out again, one last time. “Ahhh. See, now _there's_ a good boy,” I coo, as his throat rolls in a stiff swallow that keeps all his blood on the inside, where it belongs, instead of all over my busy fingers. “It's about time you stopped pushing your luck. And not a moment too soon, hmm?” I snip off the last bit of suture, then tip his chin from side to side, so I can appreciate his tightly sealed mouth from every possible angle.

“It's a good look on you. There's just one thing missing.” I smile at him. “Lucifer, try to open your mouth.”

He heaves an irritated sigh though his nose, shakes his head at being forced to humour another of my ridiculous fancies, then gives a short, half-hearted tug against the sutures, one that's over almost before it even began.

I cuff him in the temple. “What did I tell you about being an absolute prick? Again. Try your hardest.”

A threatening growl rumbles in his chest, just loudly enough to assure me that he is not at all impressed at being jerked around for my own personal amusement, before he grudgingly obeys.

Even the lowliest demon could snap such tiny threads as easily as a human child's neck.

But not Lucifer.

Not tonight.

Six black sutures pull until they're as taught as strings on the fanciest violin, but not a bit more. His chin pulls down, his cheeks suck in, his teeth are clearly as far apart as he can force them, but his beautiful lips stay tightly shut.

A few seconds of futile struggling leaves him pawing at his lap, angry and humiliated and furiously frustrated at being so effectively muzzled by a tiny bit of string. He grimaces and viciously shakes his head, quite like a well-muzzled dog, but still can't stop himself from trying, again, and again, and again. Whenever he comes close, when I can see each teeny, tiny knot start to stretch apart, he winces and strains and groans as an invisible hand plants itself under his chin and slowly forces his jaws closed again.

With a satisfied chuckle, I pat him between his horns. “All right. You can stop.”

There are a dozen words I could use to describe the look he gives me, but none of them are “appreciative". A handful might be closer to:

_I hope you drown in a tar pit._

“Oh, don't worry,” I chuckle, “it's more than mutual. Now then… I've had my bit of fun with you, so I guess we'd better get back to work. First things first: I'm sure you must loathe being forced to kneel, so here. Let's get you up.”

I slip an arm around his waist to help him to his feet, and am so unprepared for his sudden, forceful shove that I trip over my own tail and end up, for what seems like the hundredth time tonight, flat on my ass.

_Just voice your damn command, and I will obey._

_I need no help from the likes of **you.**_

_Do not touch me again._

I take a few seconds to shake the fuzzies out of my brain, then prop myself up on an elbow and sigh. “Ugh. Of course you would. For a second there, I almost forgot that you're the Avatar of Pride. Fine, then. Do it yourself. If you can get yourself up, go stand in front of the mirror.”

Poignantly ignoring me, he rolls up onto his toes and crouches there, with his wings half-open like a mutilated gargoyle, until he’s eased himself back onto his heels. He flinches and grunts under his breath as the spikes chewing at his ankles bite a little deeper, but after a few seconds of painstaking readjustments, he settles down, now with both feet flat on the floor, and rises to his feet.

His presence dominates the room. The walls behind him blur, and fade into an indistinct backdrop of muted greys. Even the torches seem to flicker and dim, bowing low before the true lord of the house, not at all deceived by the whispered commands of an insignificant human woman.

All hail Lucifer.

The proud and mighty, first-born son.

…I suddenly feel small.

Small and weak and utterly insignificant.

My tail is trying to tuck itself between my legs, but I grit my teeth and force it to stay put. I'd sooner groom a porcupine with my tongue than give him the satisfaction of knowing that he still, even now, intimidates me.

Now standing tall, properly towering over the beaten, bloody wretch still crumpled at his feet, he draws a breath so deep it seems to suck all the air out of the room, crosses his arms over his chest, and slowly folds his wings up against his back.

He turns his glittering eyes on me

_Stay down, worm._

_You belong down there._

_With the rest of the vermin._

and an icy shiver rockets down my spine, so hard that it prickles every hair on my arms and freezes the air inside my lungs.

Then he looks away, dismissing me as a trite waste of his valuable time, and carefully shuffles his way towards the mirror.

The instant his back is turned, I exhale a massive breath I never realized I was holding, then run my fingers through my hair.

They come away soaked with sweat.

…ugh.

I _am_ pathetic.

I pull myself off the floor with the help of one particularly cooperative chair, and limp over to join him.

He's already right where he's supposed to be, face to face with himself in the crooked closet door, and I can't help but notice that he's keeping his ruined hands buried under his crossed arms, and his featherless wings so tightly pressed against his back that they’re all but hidden away, tucked conveniently out of sight.

Out of sight, and out of mind.

He knows what he's lost.

He just can't stand to look at it.

The tiniest of victories, for Team Satan, but it's still enough to make me smile.

Not feeling quite so intimidated anymore, I step up behind him, lay my chin on his shoulder and wrap my arms around his waist. He goes rigid, and for a split-second I'm absolutely certain I’m about to get catapulted into a wall… but the blow never comes. Instead, he takes a measured, calming breath, then sneaks his wings out of the way so I can press myself right up against his back.

“Mmmmm. Why, thank you. Whoever thought that you, of all demons, could make for such a humble, respectful slave. I quite like you like this. So agreeable. So… obedient.” I press my lips against his ear, flick my eyes up so I can watch him in the mirror, and whisper his next instruction. “Take off your clothes.”

His eyes narrow, and the air around us chills to point where I can see my breath curling around his neck. He looks at his useless hands, then back into the bemused eyes of my reflection.

_This, now?_

_Even if I wanted to indulge you_

_We both know I cannot do it._

_These repeated failures will not teach me humility, Satan._

_They will teach me only what it feels like to be **you.**_

That last insult, delivered by my own vicious imagination, stings far worse than it should.

_But I really have no choice, do I?_

Wincing anytime his hands brush against the fabric, he eases his overcoat off, one careful arm at a time, then frowns, scowls, and taps my leg with one of his wings.

“Hmmm?”

His nudge becomes a insistent push; I respect his request, and take a half-step back.

“Ahh. So that's how you do it,” I chuckle, as he twists his wings nearly upside down, until their tips are pointing at the ceiling, and does his best to massage his jacket over them with his palms. “What an unnecessary hassle. No wonder Mammon just went around topless all the time. Here. Let me get it.”

He surrenders without acknowledging me, and goes right to work on his vest before I've even gotten his overcoat off.

Six buttons. That's all he needs to figure out.

There's no way he can do it, of course, short of throwing a tantrum and ripping it apart like a coked-up wrestler, but he works at it anyway, as calmly and patiently as if he was assembling the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle.

He's giving me nothing. No anger, no frustration, not even a hint of shame. He isn't even looking at me.

He's giving me nothing.

_I understand your game now, Satan._  
Of course you do.

_You cannot win._  
I already have.

_There is no greater strength than pride._  
Weakness, you mean.

_You will take nothing more from me._  
You'll give me everything, soon enough.

You just don’t know it yet.

Without making a big deal about it – or any degree of deal at all – I reach around his waist, nudge his hands out of the way, and take over.

He bares his teeth in a half-hearted protest… then heaves a bitter sigh, spreads his arms and twists his wings down to let me slide his vest off, and keeps them out of the way while I unbutton his shirt.

I sling it over a chair, together with the rest of his suit, then lay my chin on his bare shoulder, gaze into the mirror, and sigh.

“It must be such a terrible burden, being so breathtakingly beautiful,” I murmur, as I let my curious hands explore his chest, in a vain attempt to discover and qualify what, exactly, it is about him that makes my heart ache when I look upon him. “Not a blemish. Not a freckle. Every tiny pore, exactly in its place.” I sigh again. I can't help it. His alabaster skin isn't just warm to the touch, as any living flesh would be; it's radiantly warm, like the human world sun or the fireplace in my room on a chilly winter's night, and soothes the lingering pain in my hands. “Is this why you so rarely show yourself off? Because you wish to spare us the pain of seeing our own flaws so grossly magnified?”

He huffs under his breath, but I have no idea whether he's confirming my suspicion, or just irritated that I'm so brazenly invading his personal space.

Of all the many, many things Lucifer can't stand, being touched is at the absolute top of the list.

I know this.

Everyone knows this.

Which is precisely why, in spite of myself, my heart rushes up to hammer in my ears when he suddenly lays his hands on top of mine, with all the reassuring confidence of an experienced lover, and guides them on a tour of a body assembled, piece by piece, by the two hands of god himself.

“Ohhh…” I close my eyes, and let my greedy fingers hog all the glory for themselves. His pecs are so defined that I can curl my fingertips up underneath them, and the fact that he flexes for me when I do rolls my eyes back and leaves me grinding, only half-consciously, against his hips. “Ah… what… what are you doing…?” He tips his head to one side and presses my fingertips against his collarbone, then traces a path down, over his sternum and all the way to his navel. When I spread my fingers, instinctively craving the pleasure of a powerful set of abs clenching beneath them, a rumble swells in his chest, either a warning growl or a satisfied purr (I can't tell which); he shakes his head and presses my hands together, denying me the privilege of exploring anything without his explicit permission.

…I only started touching him because I know how much he hates it.

I don't even like men.

But he’s force-fed me a taste, now; a tantalizing hors-d’oeuvre that's whet an appetite I never knew I even had, and it _needs_ to be sated. I _need_ to know every last inch of him, and it's downright maddening that he is, even playfully, keeping me in check.

Then I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the mirror, and am instantly trapped inside.

_Do you like what you see?_

_Because…_

_Mmmm…_

_…I do…_

This must be the looking-glass entrance to Wonderland, because Lucifer's real eyes are stern and cruel and cold, not enflamed with desire, not raking over my wretched, battered body with a carnal hunger that's as flattering as it is intimidating, not devouring me like he's been forever starved, and has at last discovered the only thing that will satisfy this aching, throbbing hunger…

My hands are trembling.

“Nnnn… let me…”

_Not yet._

_Earn it._

I try again to slip out from under his grasp, but he diverts me yet again, pressing my fingers instead against the well-defined angles of his hips and tracing them down that naughty V, just under his navel, that disappears into his pants and leaves my imagination to fill in everything underneath…

_Earn it, Satan._

_Get down on your knees._

_Open those beautiful lips._

_And **earn it.**_

…I have never wanted anything, in my entire life, as badly as I suddenly want to drop to my knees and wrap my lips around Lucifer's thick, throbbing-

…wait

…what the hell is he doing to me?!

I tear my eyes away from the mirror, and the fog rolling around inside my head settles to the floor and starts to seep away.

He doesn't _want_ me.

He's _playing_ me.

And it almost worked.

“You son of a bitch,” I hiss. “Get **_out_** of my head.” I plant my heel on the chain between his ankles, grab one of his horns and wrench his head back.

“MMPH!”

I keep pulling until he's bent so far backwards that he can't hold himself up anymore; only my solid, one-handed grip is keeping him from crashing to the floor.

His eyes are starting to water, and he's pawing stiffly at my hand. Our horns aren't exactly intended to be load-bearing accessories, you know.

“Stop squirming,” I snarl, “unless you _want_ me to drop you on your ass.” With my free hand, I reach over his desperately straining abs and unlatch his belt buckle. I flick open one button, yank down his fly, brace his back with my shoulders and heave him back onto his feet. “Uuuup you go, big boy. Now then…” I give him a few considerate seconds to stabilize himself, then slide one curious hand down inside the back of his pants, teasing all the way down and all the way around, and whisper in his ear. “Tell me, Lucifer. I always joke, about you and Diavolo, but in all honestly I have no idea. Has anyone ever… had their way with you?”

For a second, he stops breathing. His shoulders stiffen; his eyes flick anxiously across the floor, back and forth, as if the answer to my question is hiding somewhere in the blood-stained carpet.

The moment passes so quickly, so suddenly, that there’s a very real chance it was just my over-eager imagination playing a trick on me.

He draws himself up to his full, imposing height, meets my mocking eyes without a hint of insecurity, and slowly shakes his head.

_No._

_You will be the first._

_…Congratulations._

He tips his chin up, takes an impossibly deep breath, and starts working his pants down over his hips.

I grab his wrists. He winces, of course, because there's basically nothing left of them except a pulverized slurry of muscle, and gives me no grief as I lift them up against his chest.

“There's no need for that. I've gone two thousand years without seeing you naked, and have no intention of starting tonight. Seeing even this much of your disgusting beauty is already making me feel like a shitty Xerox reproduction; if I have to go face-to-face with what I can only assume is your most… impressive feature, I might as well just slit my own throat and get it over with. No, no. I just need them loose enough to get-"

Only Lucifer could so efficiently derail a conversation with his mouth sewn shut. He snorts his interruption, shakes his head, then leans forward and grabs the sides of the mirror to hold himself up. His wings shudder, then stretch wide and curl up against the small of my back, inviting me closer.

Staring straight into the eyes of my stunned reflection, he slowly arches his back, from the nape of his neck to his hips, then twists his head around to look at me directly.

_If this is really what you need…_

_To feel significant…_

_Then shut up and do it._

_And do **not** disappoint me._

“Mmmmmmm… as tempting as that is… I'm afraid I have to politely decline,” I sigh. “For one, I’m about ninety percent certain you castrated me.” That detached thought, coupled with a quick glance down at the enormous blood stain that's already dried across the crotch of my pants, bring with them a self-deprecating chuckle that feels… a little unstable, actually. “Do you know how many times you have to hit a man in the testicles with a steel-tipped bullwhip to… ruin him? Because I most certainly do. But even if I _could_ … I still don't think I would. Because… hmm… maybe, because...”

It's only saying it aloud that drives the truth home, and once that awful truth sinks all the way in… I can't help it. I laugh at myself. It's just… so ridiculous. So pathetic. “I wouldn't do it, Lucifer, because I think you'd feel **too** good. Can you believe that? I honestly feel like pounding your tight, virgin ass would completely ruin sex – and masturbation, of course, let's not forget that - for me, forever, because nothing could _ever_ feel as good as **you** would. So… No. I’m not going to fuck you, Lucifer.”

His eyes narrow, more disgusted, it seems, by my apparent lack of conviction than by the thought of being aggressively sodomized by a cockroach in a black feathered boa, and he starts to push himself up.

I dig a handful of claws into the back of his neck and force him right back down. “Ah, ah, ah. I didn't tell you to get up, did I? You can stay right there. You look good like this, all bent over with your stupid ass in the air, begging to be fucked like a housecat in her first heat-"

He snarls. In the mirror, his black eyes flare red. Four massive wings rocket open, but I'm ready for him, this time. Still standing on the chain between his ankles, I tighten my grip and drive his shoulders down, until he's bracing so hard against the mirror, just to stay on his feet, that he can't try any of that shit again.

“Calm down, you impossible bitch,” I mutter. “I was giving you a goddamned compliment. Fine, then. Have it your way. I still have no intention of fucking you, of course…”

I curl my tail up, up and around, until the toxic green tip is illuminating his face with a sick, ghostly light.

“…but don't count me out just yet. I _**do**_ have every intention of raping you,” I hiss, around a dark and dangerous smile, as I let the tip slither away, across his chest and down around his hips.

He follows it with his eyes until it slips around his back and out of sight, then looks at me.

_What… what are you doing!?_

I don't think I've ever seen Lucifer nervous before.

He swallows and squirms uncomfortably as I feed the barbed tip of my tail over his waistband, across his succulent ass and up between his legs. He's wearing an expression like he was tied down waist-deep in a pool full of leeches, pretending he couldn't feel a thousand muscular mouths latching onto all his thickest, warmest, most succulent places and starting to grind, grind and peel and suck…

My tail is five feet long.

Five feet of keratinous, razor-edged dragon scales.

A six inch tip, armed with a dozen curling barbs, all intended to hook in and dig deep.

He's breathing much too fast.

I feel my way through the feverish warmth radiating between his legs, brushing just hard enough to tickle and delighting in the way he twitches and flinches and clenches despite himself, then plant one hand on his shoulder and sneak the first inch of my tail up inside him.

All that too-fast breathing stops, all at once. He freezes, as rigidly as if his every muscle was paralyzed, and suddenly can't look at me anymore.

His shoulders are trembling.

“Mmmm… god, you feel just as good as I was afraid you would. Better, even. But… relax, hmm? I'll keep all my scales flat, I promise. We both know you're not going to fight me, so relax. Relax, and… _take it_ ,” I breathe, as I force another inch past his desperate defenses. He jerks himself up on his toes and hiccups like he's about be sick, then… 

…remembers who he is.

I can't take it from him if he gives it to me.

 _Nobody_ rapes Lucifer.

He stops trembling.

His breathing stutters, catches… then slows.

In, and out.

In, hold… and out.

The Avatar of Pride grinds his teeth together, shakes himself off and shuffles into a more accommodating position, one that allows him to stop struggling just to stay on his feet and, at last, relax his legs, his stomach and his ass. He grunts and grimaces with every rapidly thickening inch that forces itself into his unwilling gut, but always shakes his head, sets his jaw and wills his ass to swallow every last bit of it, without complaint.

My tail is packed with more nerve endings than my fingertips, and is infinitely more sensitive. Sure, fighting my way in feels like dragging sandpaper across a hunk of sticky beef, but just past the gates lies a warm, squeezing, slippery heaven, one that feels like freshly kneaded dough and leaves me moaning in spite of myself. I close my eyes, so I can properly appreciate him from the inside out, and feel my way around his precious insides.

If I tickle… this spot, right here... goosebumps race up his arms.

If I curl my tail back a little further up and massage the muscular wall of his colon, right… mmmmmm… there… he tenses up and writhes in place, and doesn't settle down until I stop.

…and if I twist the tip down this way, and apply just the right bit of rolling pressure to this bundle of nerves that feels a bit like a soft, swaddled walnut, he chokes and groans and starts to squirm, more and more desperately the longer I tease him... and if I keep at it, just a few seconds longer than he can handle, he shudders and moans and clutches a palm against his groin, as if just pressing really, really hard could suppress the swollen, throbbing ache that's already dribbling down the inside of his thigh.

I liked him as a marionette - but I utterly _adore_ him as my writhing, moaning puppet.

“Ahhh… and you really are, now, aren't you?”

He cracks his eyes open. Despite the fact that his forehead is glistening with sweat and he's breathing, hard and heavy, though his nose, his eyes are still as bitterly cold as the off-limits seventh circle.

_…what the hell…_

_…are you talking about..._

_…you idiot mental patient…_

“My puppet, of course,” I purr, as I lay my hands on his feathered back and caress the soft, black down that carpets everything between his shoulders and his tailbone. “Here. Watch.”

I grab the joints of his upper wings and wrench him away from the mirror, up onto his feet and back into my waiting arms. “I've been your dancing monkey since the day I was born, Lucifer,” I whisper into his ear. “A plaything you outgrew. A ventriloquist's dummy, sitting on your lap with your hand shoved up my ass, regurgitating your drivel without a voice of my own. Let me show you how that feels.”

He still has eight inches of my curling, twisting tail jammed up inside him. I have no idea what that feels like, but if his repulsed expression and restless squirming are any indication, I don't imagine it's very comfortable.

This, then, won't feel nice at all.

I flare all the barbs along the tip of tail, and lock myself inside of him.

He jerks up on his toes and freezes like that, wide-eyed and shaking.

I could mistake him for a statue, if not for the single bead of sweat that's trickling down the back of his neck.

“Exactly,” I purr. “That’s _exactly_ what it feels like. Too scared to move… too scared to protest… too scared to even breathe… That's what it feels like, to endure a lifetime suffocating in your shadow, knowing that one innocent misstep could see you ripped apart… from the inside out.”

I yank my tail sideways. He has no choice but to stumble after it, grunting and wincing at the end of his thick, muscular leash, and I can't stop smirking. I pull him one way, then another; he flails and flaps and crow-hops, desperately trying to keep up so all his squishy insides stay inside, where they belong, instead of dangling out his asshole like a bloody, shitty, long-discarded condom.

“My, my! Look at you dance,” I snicker. “It's almost a shame we can't leave this room, because I'd love to take you out for a walk like this, so everyone could see how gosh-darn talented you are.” I drive my tail up, to watch him stagger back and forth on his tip-toes, then wrench him back towards the mirror, and finally earn myself an agonized yowl as he gets tangled in his chain and windmills right off his feet.

I catch him before he hits the floor, heave him back up and slam him face-first into the mirror, then drive my forearm, with all my body weight behind it, into his shoulders to pin him there.

He doesn't fight back. He's too busy wheezing through his nose like a snotty six-year old, and struggling so hard to breathe that I'm mildly concerned he might pass out on me. “Sheesh. You can dish it out, but you sure can't take it, can you? I always knew you were a pussy. Here, then. Take a breather, before you hyperventilate.” I relax my tail, letting all my scales and spines flatten down again, and curl my fingers idly through his hair. “There, now. Is that better, you well-dressed sack of dogshit?”

_…I'll be better…_

_…when you get your filthy tail…_

_…out of my intestines._

I chuckle. “Big words, from a squirming little bitch.”

He isn't actually squirming - not yet - but a few seconds of me patiently coiling and twisting inside of him is all it takes to get him going again.

He tries to lift himself up on his toes, but I grind my arm harder against his back, until the mirror, already sporting a hairline crack from getting rammed by his impossibly thick skull, starts to spiderweb under his forehead. “Ah ah ah. Settle down, boy. Theeeere you go,” I purr, when he finally gets his breathing under control, braces himself against the mirror and hesitantly relaxes onto my tail. “Mmmmmm. Much better. Even dry, you felt incredible. All lubed up, you feel…” my eyes drift closed, “…unbelievable.”

_…I am not…_

_…”all lubed up"…_

_…you deluded asshole…_

_…that’s blood…_

_…and you damn well know it…_

“Mhmmm… But does it really matter? It all feels the same, from this end. And in so far as you're concerned, any sort of lubrication will be infinitely better than none, in a minute or two.” I wrap my free arm around his waist, lean up against his back, and begin slowly, patiently, packing him full.

He doesn't protest. Every thrust forces a muffled grunt past his lips, jerks his shoulders up and clenches his stomach, but he stubbornly, if stiffly, relaxes after each one, sets himself back down on his heels, and waits to be filled.

It would be almost too easy to trace the winding path of his intestines; my tail is flexible, and sensitive, and long enough to wind all the way up into his stomach, but that path… well…

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I press the tip of my tail against the wall of his colon, and push. The thick muscle distends, and starts to stretch; for a few stubborn seconds, it feels like trying to force a nail through an industrial-strength balloon.

Then it pops.

He yowls and doubles over, clutching at his stomach – I bet it felt like his appendix just exploded - and I slither another six inches into his abdominal cavity.

“Sorry about that,” I breathe. “I just needed… a little more room.”

Now that I'm inside – _really_ inside, not just standing at the teller but right inside the vault – I slow down, and be as cautious as I possibly can. It's a tight fit in here, not to mention the fact that I'm spelunking blind, and if I accidentally kill him by puncturing his liver or severing a fat, pressurized artery, well… that would be a crying shame.

So to speak.

His intestines are packed tightly together, like a bag of raw, sloppy sausages that aren't quite as plump as they should be, but I tease my way around the slippery thicket without making so much as a scratch, and twist my tail around in search of my hard-earned prize at the bottom of the box. I caress my way down the outer wall of his colon, now so distended that I can feel the edges of my own scales pushing and squirming around inside, until I feel the first bit of solid resistance.

Resistance like – a knobby hunk of bone, for example.

The tiniest slit in his peritoneum is more than enough to let me sneak out of his steaming gut, through a mat of densely packed muscles… and right up to his spine. With the lightning reflexes of a triggered snake, my tail coils itself around his tailbone.

On the outside, I tighten my arm around his waist and press my lips against his ear.

“I've taken your hands. I've taken your wings, and your voice. I've even,” I grind up against his hips, and delight in the way it makes him shudder with disgust, “taken you. But you're not… quite suffering yet, are you?”

On the inside, the pinprick tip of my tail is poking and prodding, mapping every nook and cranny of the fused vertebrae that make up his coccyx, searching for a way inside.

“No. I don't think you are. So let's…”

I find the tiniest pinhole, and drive the tip of my tail inside.

“…try this.”

I suddenly wonder if anyone on the outside of our lonely room knows what's happening in here. Did my Mistress divulge her intention to anyone else? Do any of my brothers yet realize why they haven't seen Mammon in almost a week?

…I doubt it.

If anyone knew, they would've come running to the sound of his screams as I severed the bottom of his tightly wound spinal cord.

He recoils so violently that I almost think he would've ripped his own spine right out of his back, if I hadn't been holding him together, then twists around to finally look me in the eye.

That look.

I've seen that look before.

It's pulling a ripcord at ten thousand feet, and feeling no parachute open.

_…what was…_

_…what the hell did you just do to me?!_

The simple fact that he's still on his feet tells me that I need to aim higher. I curl my tail another inch up, and slice, again, straight through his spinal cord.

This time, he drops like a rock. Only my strong arm, wrapped securely around his waist, keeps him from collapsing into an undignified pile on the floor.

_…NO!…_

_…ST… STOP THIS!!!…_

“What was it this time, brother? What have I taken now? The feeling in your feet? All the way up to your ankles, perhaps?” I lean down and dig my claws into his shin, but his leg doesn't so much as twitch. Only once l've dragged my claws up past his knee does he hiss between his teeth, and – finally – try to shove me away.

A hailstorm of glass clatters onto the carpet as I drive him back up against the mirror and tighten my grip. “Ahh… you might want to think twice about that. I’m the only thing keeping you on your feet; not to mention the fact that we're a bit…” I flare all my scales, swelling everything inside him like an over-ripe pinecone, “…stuck together, at the moment.”

He swallows his scream as his wings start reflexively, without any sort of coordination, snapping against his sides.

A fat holiday turkey, all stuffed up and ready to burn.

“I trust we're on the same page, then,” I hiss into his ear, as I smooth everything out again and allow him the barest hint of relief. 

Before he can appreciate the courtesy, I shut my eyes, wind another coil around his spine and dig in higher, just above his tailbone.

It's almost too easy.

He wails and spasms so violently that I almost lose my grip. All at once, the squeezing pressure around my tail dissipates as every muscle below his navel, inside and out, relaxes at the same time.

I probably feel the awful truth before he does.

He's paralyzed, from the waist down.

I can't hold him up anymore.

“I know you can't feel it,” I chuckle, as I do my best to gently lower him onto the floor without dropping him right on his stupid face, “but you just pissed yourself. It's a good thing your ass is all plugged up, or you would've just ruined a perfectly good carpet.”

I ease him onto his stomach, my good deed for the day, then stretch out my aching back, shake the pins and needles out of my foot, and sit beside him.

It's been, oh, maybe half an hour, now, since I took a really good look at him, and suffice to say, he looks, well…

Not good.

He's shivering, but soaked in sweat. The blood smeared around his lips is the only color he has left; everything else is so deathly pale it looks like he'd already be cold to the touch. His eyes are glassy and open bit too wide, staring feverishly at absolutely nothing.

I can't tear my eyes away.

Not in spite of his brokenness, but dare I say because of it, my fallen brother is still, somehow…

…breathtakingly beautiful.

And for the first time I can remember, I don't hate him for it.

After trying, and failing, a half-dozen times to push himself off the floor, he stiffly rolls onto his side so he can prop himself up with an elbow, instead of his destroyed hands, and fixes his blood-shot eyes on his legs. Almost in slow-motion, and without blinking once, he reaches down and starts rubbing his thigh, as if a gentle massage might be all it takes to coax some feeling back.

I think it might take a bit more than that, though.

Like, for instance… a miracle.

…we don't get many of those, down here.

His dull eyes wander around the room, stopping here and there without actually focusing on anything, until they come full circle.

He blinks, and looks at me.

Hello, Lucifer.

Are you proud of me yet?

Then his pupils constrict, and he _sees_ me.

Really _sees_ me, for what might be the first time in his life. He looks me up and down, finally taking in the sight of the wretched, half-bred demon that calls him both brother and father, and…

…he starts laughing.

I grit my teeth and dig my claws into the carpet.

Don't let it get to you. Don't let _him_ get to you.

Don't let that asshole win.

Not when I'm so close.

_You can't be serious._

_**This** is your great swan song?_

_I hope you have a contingency plan, because I'm running out of disposable parts, and you…_

_…you're running out of time._

“You should probably be more concerned with your rapidly deteriorating situation than with mine,” I mutter, “I have my end well in hand.”

I've known him two thousand years too long, and have never seen him laugh so hard. His eyes are tearing. His wings are shaking. He can only breathe so well through his nose, and soon he's coughing and wheezing through his stitches… but still rolling like a madman.

_You have everything under control, do you?_

_…Is that why you're talking to yourself?_

…

…Oh.

I think he might be right.

…

Err… **_I_** might be right.

…

Whatever.

Let's see if I can make him choke on that arrogant, holier-than-thou laughter, one last time.

I'm crawling my way up his spine; expanding, using the edges of my scales to snag his vertebrae, and contracting, pulling myself deeper. A slimy earthworm, pulling itself across the ground after being driven up by the rain. The worm's blind, searching head is the tip of my tail, feeling its way between muscles and past slippery organs that flop out of the way to let it pass unobstructed, until its earth begins to vibrate with the rhythmic tremors of a heartbeat.

I wind around his powerful heart, and squeeze.

His laughter catches in his throat, and becomes a tense, choking gurgle. He grimaces and clutches at his chest, then starts squirming and shrugging his shoulders, twisting this way and that, in a vain attempt to alleviate the uncomfortable crushing pressure in his chest. A fresh flood of sweat begins to shine on his forehead.

In the Up Above, we're staring at each other.

The room is quiet.

Peaceful, almost.

But Down Below, his heart is beating hard and fast, fighting desperately to stay alive. The harder I squeeze, the faster it beats, until his skyrocketing blood pressure squeezes my tail from tip to base with a strangely pleasant pressure, and he's gasping from the exertion.

“Humans call this a heart attack. Another minute or two, and it'll kill you.”

But he already knows all that. Instead of looking worried, or trying to beg me to stop, he defiantly stares me down, trembling and wheezing and with a furious flush blossoming on his cheeks.

_...two minutes…_

_…is plenty of time…_

_…to appreciate your one, last…_

_…colossal failure._

“I'm sure it would be, but… no. You're not getting out of this that easily. We still have two feet left, and it would be such a shame to waste it.

I stop squeezing, and he exhales a shuddering sigh of relief.

My tail unwinds, leaving his heart free to stutter its way back into a proper rhythm, and continues on its way.

I scooch closer to him, tug his pants down a little further, and can't resist a quick peek at his ass. He's taking the thickest girth of my tail, now, and his muscular cheeks are being forced wide apart to accommodate the intrusion. I spit on my palm, mix it with the blood trickling between his thighs, and smear the mess over the next foot he's about to swallow. He's dilated about 4 inches, at this point. It's a good thing he's paralyzed, or his screams might've shaken the whole house down around us by now.

Now that I'm past his heart, I can't really tell how high I am, until he suddenly gags and clutches at his neck. Ahh, yup. There we go.

“Roll over,” I command. “Up onto your elbows.”

He struggles to obey, so I offer my humble assistance by using my tail to twist and lift his hips off the floor, then set him down on his crumpled knees. I crawl behind him and step over my own tail, so I can properly straddle his hips, and continue creeping up this neck.

The bottom half of the mirror is still intact, and provides the perfect vantage point. His throat, just below his Adam's apple, is distending; to avoid suffocating or choking him, I twist away from his spine and trachea and esophagus and push out, instead, against the inside of his skin. Thanks to the mirror, I can literally see the detailed outline of my tail, now, as it determinedly pulls its way towards his jawline.

He gags again, throws his head back and starts clawing furiously at his throat, trying to push my tail back down the way it came.

“You might want to hold your breath for a second,” I advise, “because this… is gonna hurt.”

I close my eyes, grab his angular hips, and drive my tail straight up through the tough barrier that protects his mouth.

He spasms and retches hot bile into his sealed mouth. I can feel it – literally _feel_ the acidic wash corroding my sensitive tail – and can't help but hiss between my teeth until he rallies like a champ and swallows the whole mess back down again.

I'm finally in. There's no more muscle to push through, no more hot, steaming organs to slip between; nothing but the sudden void of his empty mouth.

“Open your jaws,” I breathe, “wide as you can. And keep them open.”

I’ve driven straight through the spot where his tongue should be anchored, and replaced his own skinless muscle with a disgusting parody of itself, writhing and twisting inside his mouth. Once he finally opens up, I trace my way across his teeth, top and bottom, this side and that, all the way from the back of his furthest molars to the very front of his incisors; I caress the soft flesh of his cheeks, the roof of his mouth and the inside of his trembling lips, then curl myself upside down to reach back and tickle his uvula.

His throat tightens and his shoulders lurch in a series of rapid dry-heaves that he, thankfully, manages to keep dry, this time. His eyes are watering. He's drooling, probably trying not to swallow, and pawing miserably at his lips - and frankly, I don't blame him. I can't imagine how revolting it must feel to have a live parasite squirming around inside his mouth.

Once I've explored every last nook and cranny he has to offer, I poke the very tip of my tongue out between his stitches and sensually curl it's glowing end across his lips.

His eyes fixate on his new, macabre tongue, and a shudder of disgust rolls down his spine.

I, on the other hand, find the image almost… elegant, somehow.

“So… here we are. We were the same person, once,” I sigh, as I settle on my knees, rest my elbows on his back and lay my chin in my hands so I can watch him, watching me. “It seems…poetic, almost, that we should end our time bound together once again.” As I speak, I start opening my scales, one at a time, starting at the base. I can feel their razor edges digging into bone. Cutting tiny slits through soft tissue. Getting hung up on tough tendon. As each scale opens, it gets more and more difficult to move around inside him.

“It feels… a little like coming home, I guess. My birth was an accident. An abomination. I am… unnatural, and both you and I have always known it. This is the only place I was ever supposed to be. Inside you. A part of you. An insignificant piece of something… perfect.”

He isn't squirming anymore. Bit by tiny bit, he's stiffening up; first his abs, which I guess is are lowest things he can still feel, then his chest, then his neck. By the time it gets that high, I can _see_ it happening, it real time; watch every thick scale stretch its perfect outline against his throat.

“As much as I loathe to admit it… you were right. This is it, Lucifer. This is the end. Dawn is just below the horizon, and I have no more tricks up my sleeve. This is all I have… and it won't be enough to break you. You were right. But then again, you always are.”

He's starting to wheeze. They must be digging into his trachea. Not far enough to suffocate him, of course, just deep enough to restrict his air supply, and leave him drawing deep, laboured breaths.

His eyes are starting to drift. He's blinking too much; too much and too fast.

Getting a little light-headed, I suppose.

“You never begged for mercy. You never pleaded with me to stop. Even now… even when you know what's coming next… you would rather let it happen, with your head high and your dignity, somehow, still intact, than give me the satisfaction of watching you suffer.”

One by one, I spread the barbs along the end of my tail. His face contorts in creeping agony as one black tip, then two, pierce out through his cheeks. I can feel others scraping against enamel, and still others jabbing into his gums.

The very last two are already outside of his mouth; they stretch their fleshy hooks wide, a perfect pair of viper’s fangs, and hook into his lips. One on the top, and one on the bottom.

He draws one long, deep breath, and looks at me.

There's still so much strength, churning in those stormy eyes.

So much power.

His body is, for all intents and purposes, destroyed.

But I haven't damaged _him._

Not even a little.

There's only one weapon that could possibly cut that deep, but I don't wield it.

He does.

“I can't break you, Lucifer. I know that now. But I _can_ tear you apart. You understand what will happen to you, if I brace myself… here…” I plant one hand against his hips, “…and here…” and grab one his wings firmly with the other, “…and rip my tail out?”

He tries to nod. He can't, of course, not with his neck as rigidly immobilized as the rest of him, but I can feel his muscles straining to contract, and there's only possible answer he would ever give me.

_Yes._

_You will disembowel me._

_I will spend my last minutes alive in unbearable agony._

He straightens his arms, forcing his chest as high off the floor as he can. He stretches his wings wide, until their fleshy tips are nearly brushing the walls, then gracefully furls them up against his back.

_And I will **win.**_

He closes his eyes.

Holds his breath.

And waits.

…I almost don't want to do this to him.

It will be… especially cruel, even by my standards.

But…

I am a pact-bound demon, and if my Mistress wants him to suffer...

Then he will.

I slowly relax my tail, taking pains to settle each barb and every scale without pinching or snagging or hooking anything soft, and slither my way free.

His eyes snap open. His brow furrows with confusion, but the vacant, stupefied expression doesn't last long before giving way to understanding, then disbelief, then… 

…horror.

“Mmm…MMM MM!!”

It's the first time he's made a sound – a real, vocal sound – since I ripped out his tongue.

He's trying to talk to me.

“MM MMM!”

And he doesn't care how stupid he sounds.

Gee. Must be important.

“Hush, Lucifer. You're still bleeding internally, you know. It won't kill you, but you should really take it easy for a while.” I push myself to my feet, limp to Mishka's bed and begin the revolting chore of cleaning the blood and shit off my tail. “There's no need to stress yourself out. I was careful. You're going to be fine.”

“MMmm MMM!!!”

He's trying to turn himself around, to heave himself across the floor with his bloody palms and his elbows and his wings, and is deathly pale and shaking from the effort before he's even halfway to the bed.

If he asked me to help him, I would. But he won't. Lucifer can do a thousand things perfectly and ten thousand well, but asking for help will never be one of them. I sigh, and move to stand over him so he can rest and catch his breath.

He grabs desperately at my legs, instead. “MMMMmmMMMM!!!”

“ ** _Do NOT touch me, worm,_** ” I snarl, so harshly that he flinches and snatches his hand back.

He looks confused, for a second, then unsure, and I can't help but wonder if this is the first time he's ever felt intimidated. When he finally looks up at me again, he keeps his head down and his shoulders hunched, properly cowed, and timidly touches his lips.

Timid.

There's a word I never imagined I'd use to describe the Avatar of Pride.

“Even if I take them out, you still won't be able to talk.”

“MMmmMm mmM!”

“I was recruited as a torturer, Lucifer. I really shouldn't indulge you, but… ah, well. I did say I was finished, didn't I? Guess that means I'm officially off the clock. So here. Tip your head up.”

I snap the stitches, but don't take them out. Getting to watch him grimace as he pulls his mouth open is my payment for the courtesy.

“You're welcome. Now, go ahead. I'll do my best.”

_You…were…supposed…to…kill…me!_

I’m impressed. The only sounds he can make are meaningless vowels, garbled uuughs and aaahs and ooos, but he's forming each word so slowly, so painstakingly, that I can fill in all the consonants just by reading his lips.

“I'm pretty sure that's what Mistress had in mind, yes.”

_THEN…DO…IT!!!_

Far beyond frightened, now.

I think he's starting to panic.

“Sorry. I wasn't commanded to kill you, and I don't murder people – even if they deserve it – just because I can. I’m not _you._ ”

His eyes flood with a wash of terrified tears, and for the first time, he doesn’t try to hide them from me.

_…It's…nearly…dawn…_

_They'll…all…be…here…soon._

_I…can't…let…them…see…me…like…this…_

“They'll understand. Don't worry. Whatever you did, they'll forgive you, sooner or later. They're your family, after all, and they all love you.” I crouch down, and brush his sweat-soaked hair away from his face. “You won't be a burden. They'll take care of you. I bet they'll enjoy it, actually; finally being able to repay all the countless times you've cared for them. I know Beel, bless his simple heart, will be overjoyed to help you at the dinner table, and – oh! And Asmo, of course. He'll be a doting mother, won't he? Helping you dress every morning, and bathe every evening, and… err, well… he might be a touch squeamish about cleaning up your… you know… incontinent accidents, but I'm sure Belphie would have the stomach for it – and he's always had a soft spot for you, after all…”

He's not looking at me anymore. I don't even know if he's still listening. He's staring, instead, at his useless hands, with devastated tears trickling down his cheeks.

_Please… you…win…_

_I'll…do…anything…you…want…_

_Satan…please…I'm… **begging** …you…_

He digs his bloody palms into the carpet and heaves a heart-broken sob.

_…don't…make…me…live…like…this._

“It won't be so bad,” I sigh, as I sit on the floor and lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

His haunted eyes drift from his hands to mine, then up to me, and after humbly asking permission with his expression alone, he slowly, hesitantly, lays his head in my lap.

_…Satan…?_

_…my…_

_…my…hands…hurt._

“Shhhh. I know they do. I know.”

And I hold him close, and I stroke his hair and his elegant horns, and I don't laugh at him, or mock him, or shame him, and I guard him while he cries, and if anyone – be it the Demon King or the high heavenly father himself – tries to lay a single finger on him while he's vulnerable, I'll slaughter them where they stand.

He was always right, you know.

Wrath could never be powerful enough to make Lucifer suffer. The only thing that ever stood a chance…

…was pride.


End file.
